life update

Last Monday I went to my weekly Torah class- we discussed the place in Shulchan Aruch were it says where to shecht a giraffe. Apparently the notion that we don't know where to shecht a giraffe is a bubbemeise.


Tuesday was Puzzled Pint, with ghost_lingering and thirdblindmouse. We had fun puzzling and solved the puzzles really quickly for us, but the venue had a loud polka band playing through the whole night, which was distracting and annoying.

Friday was a local Shabbaton, with board gaming after dinner. I played Small Worlds for the first time. It was fun in spite of the game, not really because of the game, because we had two veteran players and three newbies, and the veterans were much better and it was obvious one of them would win by the midway point, but Small Worlds is looong and there's a lot of downtime between turns, so the whole thing was annoying. But on the other hand, company was great and we had a lot of fun punning and telling jokes while not playing. Shabbos lunch was also a really nice time with great company.

Sunday I went over to ghost_lingering's apartment for a vidding day with thirdblindmouse and anoel. I hosted the first one last spring right before the VVC deadline and at VVC we decided to make it officially bimonthly. Vidding is a pretty solitary activity, so most of the time was just us sitting in silence for hours together, but it was companionly and it was nice to be able to show drafts to people and get instant feedback. I have only a few more detail edits left on my Festivid! On the other hand, my Chewbacca vid got a total almost from scratch overhaul with even a new version of the song.

Tomorrow night is my biweekly rpg night, still on D20 Modern in the Damnation Decade setting, although we are probably close to ending the campaign. One way or another. Either the Antichrist kills us or we kill him, and I'm more inclined to expect the first to happen.

I'll be driving down to the DC area next Monday night for Jewmas, which will have a non-Jew or two this year. Otherwise my holiday plans are pretty much done already which is nice and relaxing. Next important event will be Hunt in mid-January.

Masechet Chullin Daf 20

Daf 20

The discussion here is of melika, an unusual procedure described in Leviticus for offering bird sacrifices. It involves the Kohen cutting the back of the neck of the bird with their sharpened right thumbnail.

We're obviously studying Chullin so the Gemara asks why the Mishna is discussing a sacrifice. The answer is either because the Mishna wanted to compare Melika to Shechita to show how similar they are, or to compare Melika to Shechita to show how dissimilar they are. That might seem odd, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Normally with sacrifices, shechita is done essentially the same as shechita chullin. Melika is one of the relatively few exceptions. And there is a weird feature of melika which is that if you slaughter a bird by melika with the intention of offering it as a sacrifice, it's acceptable to eat, but if you just slaughter a bird by melika for chullin, it's a neveila. So the Gemara is trying to understand if melika is essentially like chullin shechita of birds, but with a few weird features that make it different, or if melika is an essentially different process.

It seems the answer depends on whether you think chullin shechita for birds is required d'oraysa or d'rabbanan (Most of the times when shechita is mentioned, it mentions chaya or behema, which are categories that exclude birds. Occasionally Of is mentioned with chaya or behema and so some learn that we are obligated d'oraysa to shecht birds, while others don't make that connection and say rather that shechita chullin for Ofs is just a practice we adopted to minimize confusion, similar to basar v'chalav on birds.) If chullin shechita of birds is d'oraysa, then the Torah prescribes these two separate procedures for shechting birds in different situations, and so we can learn things from one procedure that applies to the other by analogy. However, if chullin shechita of birds is d'rabbanan, its methods are learned from chullin shechita of animals, and you can't learn anything from the comparison between melika and chullin shechita of birds.

And so this will have implication for how you learn whether certain features of melika are acceptable bedieved or assur. For example, unlike shechita, melika is supposed to be done with a pushing motion rather than a back and forth motion. But if you do melika with a back and forth motion, is it a kosher sacrifice bedieved? According to those who think that chullin shechita of birds is the same as melika except where it isn't, you apparently would say that melika with a back and forth motion is acceptable bedieved.