Masechet Chullin Daf 43 & 44

Two very technical pages about the specific nature of defects that result in trefas, but I've been a little under the weather, so here are some quick notes.

Daf 43

In proof of Rabbi Yose ben Yehuda's assertion that a puncture in the gallbladder is not a disqualifying trefa, Rabbi Yitzchak ben Yosef cites a verse in Iyov where Iyov complains that he is pouring out gall on the ground. Since Iyov didn't die, this is proof that one can live with a punctured gallbladder.

The Gemara's response is "A nes is different." Iyov didn't live with his wounds because the wound wasn't serious, he lived because the Satan kept him alive to further torment him and let him survive until his salvation. Therefore, we can't learn a halacha about shechita from the case of Iyov.



At the end of the page there's a great little note about pedagogy. The Gemara records Rabbah's teaching about the proper way to inspect the membranes around the gizzard of a bird to see if there's been a puncture. There are two membranes, which have different colors, and a bird is only a trefa if it has been punctured through both membranes. But for technical reasons I don't have the brainpower to go through right now, Rabbah teaches that you must inspect from the inside out.

Then the Gemara records a story of a time when Rabbah was inspecting a bird and he was inspecting from the outside in. His student Abaye saw and objected by pointing out that Rabbah had taught the opposite. So Rabbah followed his student's objection and inspected from the inside, and sure enough, found evidence invalidating the bird. The Gemara says that it wasn't that Rabbah had forgotten his ruling, but that he intentionally pretended not to do it correctly in order to teach Abaye to have the independence to make the ruling on his own.



Daf 44

There are several disagreements between Shmuel and Rav about the exact location of both the highest and lowest points on the esophagus that you can shecht, and the condition of whether a puncture in those highest and lowest points render an animal trefah.

The Gemara records a story where Rava inspected an animal that had been shechted starting near the top of the esophagus and then the majority of the shechita had been lower in the esophagus. It says that Rava ruled it a trefa by taking on both the chumras of Rav and the chumras of Shmuel. In other words, if in a vacuum Rava had only known the halachos of Rav, he would have found the animal kosher, and if he'd only known the halachos of Shmuel, he would have found the animal kosher, but by taking on the most strict parts of each's halacha and combining them, he ruled the animal trefa.

Rabbi Abba heard about this and he issued a ruling saying that Rava was responsible for compensating the owner of the animal for unfairly making the animal a trefa when he shouldn't have.

Mar the son of Ravina cites a baraisa that says that the halacha is always in accordance with Rabbi Hillel, but one may choose to follow Rabbi Shammai... but if one always follows the kulas of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai, in order to construct the most lenient Judaism, they are evil, and if they always follow the chumras of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai, they are a fool.

From this the Gemara learns that Rava could not have been, as originally supposed, following the chumras of both Rav and Shmuel and it reinterprets the halacha to find that Rava was following the halacha of Rav.

Mystery Hunt!

The MIT Mystery Hunt will be starting in exactly one week. I am as usual so fucking excited.

(Our team captain, in an email the other day: "And yes, you can gauge my rising excitement for the Hunt by the number of e-mails I send." It is the good kind of spam. :D)

My team, which picks a different palindrome as its team name every year, is this year to be known as:

¯\_(+_+)_/¯ (pronounced 'huh')

(no subject)

I promised to transcribe and post this when I got a chance, because I think it's a really interesting comment. It's Rabbi Dov Linzer speaking about Chullin Daf 41, which prohibits draining the blood of a shechita chullin into the sea and similar acts because it's chikuy haminim, acting in the manner of the heretics.

Transcribing an off the cuff spoken statement is hard and I will warrant that not every thing I transcribed is word for word, but it should cover the meaning of what he was saying.

I will also say very quickly that it's quite fascinating today when you read some of the... within the last fifty years and even more so in the last ten years... some of the debates that go on within the Orthodox community, particularly the ones about egalitarian nature, inclusion of women, but there's other examples as well, you know, that even if it's halachically okay, the more traditionalists resist. One of the reasons might have to do with basic reasons that people that are traditionalist and resist feminism because of questions of women's roles and so on. But one of the reasons often stated explicitly they say is because they say that we're all becoming Conservative jews and one of the reasons to reject this is because it's a marker of Nonorthodox Judaism in their eyes. So sometimes the phrase that's actually used in these teshuvot about these things is that it's forbidden because this is chikuy haminim or chikuy hagoyim. Because it is mimicking what the non-jews do or mimicking what the apostates do, and by that they mean conservative jews, nonorthodox jews. I actually had somebody... When i do a kesuba for a wedding, and if the chassan and kallah want, and most of the time they do, ones that are coming to me at least, want the mother's name in the kesuba as well. So and so bat father and mother or so and so ben father and mother. So I had a Rabbi I was friendly with, pretty moderate guy. he called me and said I understand you include the mother's name in the kesubah, what's your basis for that. I said I don't think that's any different than including the family name, which is not originally in the Gemara, but it gives greater identification, so this also gives greater identification. I'm not not having the father's name. But I don't see what the problem is. I said, what do you think the problem is? He said I think it's a very serious question of chikuy haminim. You know, because Conservative Jews do it.

So that is, I find that deeply disturbing. On the one hand it's refreshing they're being honest about what their real concern is. You know, not halakha but that it feels too much like Conservative Judaism. But to take the issue going on here, about idolatry and certain kinds of actions, but all of a sudden abstract it and generalize it and apply it. It's disturbing but it's coming up more frequently around these issues. They're now prohibiting the permitted.

But I couldn't pass that phrase by without telling you it has contemporary import.