The Tzoah Rotachat (Hebrew: צוֹאָה רוֹתַחַת|Ṣōʾā Roṯaḥaṯ|boiling excrement) in the Talmud and the Zohar is a location in Gehenna where the souls of Jews who committed certain sins are sent for punishment.
The Babylonian Talmud lists the cause for a Jew being sent to Tzoah Rotachat as those who scoff at the words of the Chazal are judged in Tzoah Rotachat. The Babylonian Talmud also hints that the punishment has more of a physical implication to it. In Eruvin 21b.10, Rashi writes that he who engages in "excessive scoffing" is met with the second part of the same "straining of the flesh", essentially being judged excessively (straining) of his body.
The supposed presence of Jesus in boiling excrement is one of the often-claimed references to Jesus in the Talmud.[1] Onkelos raises up a spirit named Yeshu by necromancy,[2] and asks him about his punishment in Gehinnom.[3] [4] Yeshu replies that he is in "boiling excrement."[5]
According to Gittin, "Onkelos bar Kalonikos, the son of Titus’s sister, wanted to convert." (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56b.18)
According to Jews for Judaism, the Jesus (Yeshu) in this passage is different from the Jesus of the Christian New Testament; a 1st century BCE Jewish sectarian who rejected rabbinic Judaism by creating a new religion that combined Judaism with Hellenistic paganism.[6] Writing for the Jesuit America magazine, Gilbert S. Rosenthal wrote, "even if Jesus of Nazareth was the intended subject of some of these troubling passages, they reflect the opinion of one man, not the consensus of Jewish thought then or now."[7]
Joseph Karo of Toledo (1488–1575), in his Kabbalistic work Maggid Mesharim "Sermonizer on Ethics", explains that just as in the human digestive order the liver, heart and other organs receive their sustaining nutrients from the ingested foods and whatever is of no need and "unworkable" is excreted to give fertility to works of low value (sitra achra "other side"), so too in heavenly judgment this soul is sent to the spiritual level equivalent of excrement and those that derive benefit thereof. As to the concept of "boiling", Joseph relays as to imply during the time of heat and anger of that level (i.e. when the oven is hot), the soul is put there. Karo goes on to compare the heresy of Peor as giving sustenance to this specific level of sitra achra.
Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague (c.1520–1609), in his work Netzach Yisroel ("Eternity of Israel"), provides an in-depth analysis as to this seemingly unconnected sequence of action and punishment. Rabbi Lowe explains, as a rule of thumb, that the logic of Chazal is of an unrelated plane to that of common human intellect. Thus, one who scoffs at it is judged in the opposite of this higher plane, i.e. Tzoah Rotachat, which is considered a matter of irrelation to the relatively superior human body (since it is released as waste) and the antithesis of godly knowledge and presence (as is brought in Talmud Sukka p. 42b that one is obligated to distance himself from the excrement of a child who has the ability of speech since this excrement produces an intense odor comparative to infant who cannot yet speak). Rabbi Lowe concludes that excrement is the polar opposite of refined godly intellect and worship and is thus the natural consequence of the scoffer thereof and of the Jew who chooses idol worship and Shituf.[8]
This defined location is quoted in the Zohar;