Rat
RAT
RAT (Heb. ?????, ?oled, mod. Heb. ????????, ?uldah, jps and av "weasel"), rodent. Two species of rat are found in Israel, Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus. The second only reached the country in approximately the 18th century. ?uldah occurs as the name of a prophetess (ii Kings 22:14, the same verse including two other names taken from the world of fauna: shafan ("coney") and akhbar ("mouse")). In the Torah ?oled is mentioned with the akhbar among the unclean creeping things, from which it seems that holed is the same as ?uldah (so rendered by Onkelos) where the Palestinian Targum (cf. Meg. 14b) has kirkushta, "rat." The name ?uldah is derived from ?alod ("to undermine"); "?uldah that undermines the foundations of the houses" (Pes. 118b in Ms. Munich). The ?uldah is frequently mentioned in rabbinic literature. It is said to drag food into its nest for storage (Pes. 1:2; tj, Shab. 14:1, 14c; Lev. R. 6:2). There is a well-known legend of "the rat [?uldah] and the pit," in which the ?uldah bit the child of a man who did not keep faith with a maiden and married another (see Rashi, Ta'an. 8a). These characteristics do not apply to the cat or the polecat (Mustela nivalis), with which some have identified the ?uldah. The polecat is not found in Israel, neither does it store up its food.
bibliography:
Lewysohn, Zool, 101f. (no. 135), 107f. (no. 139); F.S. Bodenheimer, Animal and Man in Bible Lands (1960), 227 (index), s.v.Rattus; J. Feliks, Animal World of the Bible (1962), 42; M. Dor, Leksikon Zo'ologi (1965), 122. add. bibliography: Feliks, Ha-?ome'a?, 226.
[Jehuda Feliks]