Professionals and educated laymen agree that the past 30 years have brought about a revolution in our understanding of infant development during the very first months of life. The inchoate "blooming buzzing confusion" once felt to characterize the neonate has given way to a well-documented realm of finely tuned perceptions and highly complex interactions. These shifts in our thinking are generally assumed to imply that periods chronologically more remote from our own are conceptually more remote from our modern achievements. But in fact, they are not. I here examine ancient and medieval rabbinic texts and find these "modern" issues discussed. The formulations of these texts, I suggest, sharpen the psychoanalytic focus on the role of the integrative function in very early development.