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Masechet Chullin Daf 31 and 32
Dec. 29th, 2018 06:02 pmDaf 31
Daf 31 explores the question of kavana when it comes to shechitas chullin.
Daf 30 ended with discussion of the derivation of the law that dirasa, pressing, invalidates shechita by analogy from a verse in Yirmiyahu that mentions the word shachat and an arrow. Thus we learn that the shechita must happen in the manner of an arrow being drawn back on a bow. Now, really, as I've been saying, the laws of shechita were Oral Torah l'Moshe Misinai, so the point is just that this verse is a hint to teach this law.
Since it mentioned arrows, it tells a story of Rabbi Yonah bar Tachlifa who went out hunting with a bow for birds and was a good enough shot that he could kill the bird in a kosher way with his arrow. Now, at least d'rabbanan we require shechita of birds for chullin, and possibly d'oraysa, so one might think that shooting a bird with a bow would present a problem since it's not per se shechita and the cutting tool is not in the hand of the shochet when the simanim are cut.
Before reaching this point, though, the Gemara raises a series of other problems with this shechita. How do you know that a halada didn't happen? You inspect the feathers of the neck and make sure the incision from the arrow is not from the middle. How do deal with the mitzvah of covering the blood when it may have flown all over the field? Apparently he would prepare the ground of the whole field beforehand and then have spotters to see all the blood and they would cover all the blood with dirt.
And clearly the main point here is that in the unlikely case where an animal could be slaughtered from range, it's kosher even though the shechita was not al y'dei shochet directly, because it was done directly from their koach.
The next Mishna discusses a case where a knife falls down and somehow slaughters an animal properly through all the simanim. In this case, the animal is not kosher, since the verse in Deuteronomy that says v'zavachta has the word she'atah, so we learn the shechita must be done through the physical agency of a person.
But Rabbi Zeira in the name of Rabbi Nosson says if the knife is thrown rather than dropped, even if there wasn't specific kavana to shecht the animal, it's still kosher. The Rabbis disagree, but the halacha is with Rabbi Nosson. So strictly speaking kavana is not required for shechitas chullin. But there are qualifications. A non-Jew is not allowed to do shechita even if they have intent to kill the animal in a kosher manner, because kashrus is in some fundamental way the realm of the Jews. And as the case of the fallen knife shows, and the case of the water-wheel whose power was initiated secondarily, from the previous chapter, in spite of there being no need for kavana, the shechita needs to be done by a deliberate human action of some sort.
The rest of the daf explores the general question of kavana and makes a distinction between kavana required for acts involving kedusha and no kavana required for acts involving matters of chullin. The example given is a woman who was a niddah who needed to immerse in a mikvah to become ritually pure. What if before she can do this, she falls in a mikvah? Rav Yehuda rules that she is permitted to have relations with her husband, but she is not permitted to eat ma'aser sheni.
This is kind of unintuitive, right? You're generally either tamei or tahor. Like, imagine you touch a sheretz and the neveilah it's been crawling on. You're not tamei twice, so that you need to immerse in a mikvah twice to remove the tumah, you're just tumah, stam. So the idea that the inadvertent mikvah immersion can remove the tumah with regard to a matter of chullin but not a matter of kedusha is strange, but it's consistent with the teaching of shechita that shechitas kodshim requires kavana and shechitas chullin doesn't. So that's pretty interesting.
Daf 32
The Mishna discusses shehiya, pausing, which also invalidates shechita. What is a pause? How long does it need to be to invalidate? The Tanna Kamma says that the pause must be at least the length of a typical successful shechita to invalidate, whereas Rabbi Shimon says it must be the length of the examination of the knife, which is presumably a shorter period of time.
Then there's an argument about whether the typical successful shechita is the typical time for a large animal, for a small animal, or for a bird. Rava's opinion is that the length of a shehiya when shechting a particular kind of animal is particular to that class of animal, so a shorter shehiya invalidates shechita on a bird. There are dissenting more lenient opinions from Shmuel, who has the support of Rabbi Yochanan, who says that you use the length of time for the longest type of shechita even in the case of a bird, and from Rabbi Chananya, who says you also consider some amount of the preparatory time before shechting in determining the length of the maximum allowed shehiya.
There are a few more confusing cases. What if there are several short pauses in the middle of the cutting, none of which exceeds the invalidating time for a shehiya, but summed together they exceed a shehiya? What if one has a dull knife and by drawing the knife back and forth for a very long time (up to a day) without pausing, they are able to do a kosher shechitah? All of these are cases that we are just machmir on today and would say are not kosher, but they seem to be permitted bedieved here.
The basic problem for the Rabbanim here is that they didn't have wristwatches. This Mishna would be much more straightforward if they could say "A shehiya is forty five seconds." Because they can't, they have to develop relative time defintions that are unambiguous enough that they can be applied more or less consistently across the board, so a repeated motif in the discussion is that someone will propose a timing mechanism that will vary based on circumstances and the Gemara will reframe it in a less ambiguous way.
So Rabbi Yochanan interprets Rabbi Shimon's rule that the maximum permitted shehiya is the length of time it takes to inspect the knife as referring to the previously mentioned ritual of, before starting to shecht for the day, going to the local Rabbi and presenting your knife to them for inspection as a courtesy reflecting their honor. But this could be any amount of time depending on how long it takes to walk to the Rabbi, get their attention, et cetera, so the Gemara reframes it by assuming that the shochet IS the local Rabbi and asking what the time it would take for him to inspect his own knife, because we can assume this is a basically consistent amount of time.
The next Mishna is about cases where one siman is properly shechted but the other is damaged in the shechita. Is it a neveilah or is it a treifa? If you say it's a neveilah, you're saying that the act of damaging the siman was one of the five invalidating pasulas and thus the animal is not a kosher shechita. If you say it's a treifa, you're saying that it was essentially a kosher shechita but the damage during the cutting of the siman rendered it a treifa.
This might be a complicated circumstantial question that goes back to all of the things the Gemara has been trying to understand about shechita as a Process. If you put a hole in the trachea first that would be a treifa, and then you properly shecht the esophagus, is that different from if you properly shecht the esophagus and then put a hole in the trachea while trying to cut it? If shechita is one single process, then the order probably doesn't matter, it's just a neveilah. But if shechita consists of discrete steps and then at the end you declare it shechita, then maybe as soon as you damaged the trachea in the first case, it became a potential treifah and then you properly completed the shechita by shechting the esophagus, so it's a treifah.
The Mishna reports a dispute between Rabbi Yeshevav, who holds that these cases are all neveilah, and Rabbi Akiva, who holds that they are all treifas. Then Rabbi Yeshevav delineated a more precise principle distinguishing between the concept of 1) Shenif's'la bashechita and 2) Davar acher g'ram lif'sol...
1. The pasula happened during shechita
2. Another thing happened that rendered it pasul incidentally to shechita
Rabbi Akiva conceded to Rabbi Yeshevav that framed in these more general terms rather than arguing about specific cases, Concept 1 is neveila and Concept 2 is treifa. But there's still apparently a Mishna in the next perek that identifies the various treifas that seems more consistent with Rabbi Akiva's original position- this is a difficulty that can be resolved in one of a few somewhat unsatisfactory ways. Either the Mishna in Perek 3 reflects Rabbi Akiva's former position before he conceded to Rabbi Yeshevav, or you have to read pretty hard against the language of either this Mishna or the one in Perek 3.
Daf 31 explores the question of kavana when it comes to shechitas chullin.
Daf 30 ended with discussion of the derivation of the law that dirasa, pressing, invalidates shechita by analogy from a verse in Yirmiyahu that mentions the word shachat and an arrow. Thus we learn that the shechita must happen in the manner of an arrow being drawn back on a bow. Now, really, as I've been saying, the laws of shechita were Oral Torah l'Moshe Misinai, so the point is just that this verse is a hint to teach this law.
Since it mentioned arrows, it tells a story of Rabbi Yonah bar Tachlifa who went out hunting with a bow for birds and was a good enough shot that he could kill the bird in a kosher way with his arrow. Now, at least d'rabbanan we require shechita of birds for chullin, and possibly d'oraysa, so one might think that shooting a bird with a bow would present a problem since it's not per se shechita and the cutting tool is not in the hand of the shochet when the simanim are cut.
Before reaching this point, though, the Gemara raises a series of other problems with this shechita. How do you know that a halada didn't happen? You inspect the feathers of the neck and make sure the incision from the arrow is not from the middle. How do deal with the mitzvah of covering the blood when it may have flown all over the field? Apparently he would prepare the ground of the whole field beforehand and then have spotters to see all the blood and they would cover all the blood with dirt.
And clearly the main point here is that in the unlikely case where an animal could be slaughtered from range, it's kosher even though the shechita was not al y'dei shochet directly, because it was done directly from their koach.
The next Mishna discusses a case where a knife falls down and somehow slaughters an animal properly through all the simanim. In this case, the animal is not kosher, since the verse in Deuteronomy that says v'zavachta has the word she'atah, so we learn the shechita must be done through the physical agency of a person.
But Rabbi Zeira in the name of Rabbi Nosson says if the knife is thrown rather than dropped, even if there wasn't specific kavana to shecht the animal, it's still kosher. The Rabbis disagree, but the halacha is with Rabbi Nosson. So strictly speaking kavana is not required for shechitas chullin. But there are qualifications. A non-Jew is not allowed to do shechita even if they have intent to kill the animal in a kosher manner, because kashrus is in some fundamental way the realm of the Jews. And as the case of the fallen knife shows, and the case of the water-wheel whose power was initiated secondarily, from the previous chapter, in spite of there being no need for kavana, the shechita needs to be done by a deliberate human action of some sort.
The rest of the daf explores the general question of kavana and makes a distinction between kavana required for acts involving kedusha and no kavana required for acts involving matters of chullin. The example given is a woman who was a niddah who needed to immerse in a mikvah to become ritually pure. What if before she can do this, she falls in a mikvah? Rav Yehuda rules that she is permitted to have relations with her husband, but she is not permitted to eat ma'aser sheni.
This is kind of unintuitive, right? You're generally either tamei or tahor. Like, imagine you touch a sheretz and the neveilah it's been crawling on. You're not tamei twice, so that you need to immerse in a mikvah twice to remove the tumah, you're just tumah, stam. So the idea that the inadvertent mikvah immersion can remove the tumah with regard to a matter of chullin but not a matter of kedusha is strange, but it's consistent with the teaching of shechita that shechitas kodshim requires kavana and shechitas chullin doesn't. So that's pretty interesting.
Daf 32
The Mishna discusses shehiya, pausing, which also invalidates shechita. What is a pause? How long does it need to be to invalidate? The Tanna Kamma says that the pause must be at least the length of a typical successful shechita to invalidate, whereas Rabbi Shimon says it must be the length of the examination of the knife, which is presumably a shorter period of time.
Then there's an argument about whether the typical successful shechita is the typical time for a large animal, for a small animal, or for a bird. Rava's opinion is that the length of a shehiya when shechting a particular kind of animal is particular to that class of animal, so a shorter shehiya invalidates shechita on a bird. There are dissenting more lenient opinions from Shmuel, who has the support of Rabbi Yochanan, who says that you use the length of time for the longest type of shechita even in the case of a bird, and from Rabbi Chananya, who says you also consider some amount of the preparatory time before shechting in determining the length of the maximum allowed shehiya.
There are a few more confusing cases. What if there are several short pauses in the middle of the cutting, none of which exceeds the invalidating time for a shehiya, but summed together they exceed a shehiya? What if one has a dull knife and by drawing the knife back and forth for a very long time (up to a day) without pausing, they are able to do a kosher shechitah? All of these are cases that we are just machmir on today and would say are not kosher, but they seem to be permitted bedieved here.
The basic problem for the Rabbanim here is that they didn't have wristwatches. This Mishna would be much more straightforward if they could say "A shehiya is forty five seconds." Because they can't, they have to develop relative time defintions that are unambiguous enough that they can be applied more or less consistently across the board, so a repeated motif in the discussion is that someone will propose a timing mechanism that will vary based on circumstances and the Gemara will reframe it in a less ambiguous way.
So Rabbi Yochanan interprets Rabbi Shimon's rule that the maximum permitted shehiya is the length of time it takes to inspect the knife as referring to the previously mentioned ritual of, before starting to shecht for the day, going to the local Rabbi and presenting your knife to them for inspection as a courtesy reflecting their honor. But this could be any amount of time depending on how long it takes to walk to the Rabbi, get their attention, et cetera, so the Gemara reframes it by assuming that the shochet IS the local Rabbi and asking what the time it would take for him to inspect his own knife, because we can assume this is a basically consistent amount of time.
The next Mishna is about cases where one siman is properly shechted but the other is damaged in the shechita. Is it a neveilah or is it a treifa? If you say it's a neveilah, you're saying that the act of damaging the siman was one of the five invalidating pasulas and thus the animal is not a kosher shechita. If you say it's a treifa, you're saying that it was essentially a kosher shechita but the damage during the cutting of the siman rendered it a treifa.
This might be a complicated circumstantial question that goes back to all of the things the Gemara has been trying to understand about shechita as a Process. If you put a hole in the trachea first that would be a treifa, and then you properly shecht the esophagus, is that different from if you properly shecht the esophagus and then put a hole in the trachea while trying to cut it? If shechita is one single process, then the order probably doesn't matter, it's just a neveilah. But if shechita consists of discrete steps and then at the end you declare it shechita, then maybe as soon as you damaged the trachea in the first case, it became a potential treifah and then you properly completed the shechita by shechting the esophagus, so it's a treifah.
The Mishna reports a dispute between Rabbi Yeshevav, who holds that these cases are all neveilah, and Rabbi Akiva, who holds that they are all treifas. Then Rabbi Yeshevav delineated a more precise principle distinguishing between the concept of 1) Shenif's'la bashechita and 2) Davar acher g'ram lif'sol...
1. The pasula happened during shechita
2. Another thing happened that rendered it pasul incidentally to shechita
Rabbi Akiva conceded to Rabbi Yeshevav that framed in these more general terms rather than arguing about specific cases, Concept 1 is neveila and Concept 2 is treifa. But there's still apparently a Mishna in the next perek that identifies the various treifas that seems more consistent with Rabbi Akiva's original position- this is a difficulty that can be resolved in one of a few somewhat unsatisfactory ways. Either the Mishna in Perek 3 reflects Rabbi Akiva's former position before he conceded to Rabbi Yeshevav, or you have to read pretty hard against the language of either this Mishna or the one in Perek 3.