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Kilayim Perek 1
Sep. 6th, 2024 09:47 amThere is a Boston community effort to make a Siyum Mishnayos on October 6th for the sake of the captives and those who have died in Israel in the past year. I signed up to learn the first four perakim of Kilayim, I might do more if I have time. I chose Kilayim because I find the rabbinical science interesting, because it connects to the agricultural laws of Eretz Yisrael, because I've been having some houseplant adventures lately, and because it's not likely to bring up anything traumatic.
Kilayim 1:1
It starts with a list of minim that are so similar that if they grow together it's not kilayim. The very first is chita and zunin, wheat and poison wheat. Which seems to mostly be understood as triticum aestivum and lolium temulentum, which a)are completely different genera! And b) are so interconnected that wikipedia notes that they often grow together, are often confused for each other until the seeds grow, and that lolium was historically a significant weed problem for wheat cultivators.
To make two key points, I've written a bunch about how the Rabbis' idea of min is not the modern idea of species, but for whatever reason it bugs me a lot more here. I was talking it through with someone and I think it’s because the underpinning of Kilayim is a much vague set of taxonomic distinctions than kashrut, so it's not clear what the Rabbis are working off. There’s no fins and scales type dividing lines. Is it halacha l'moshe misinai? Is it pure empirical observation, and if so, what empirical elements are prioritized? Is it folk wisdom about agriculture?
I found myself longing for a modern rule like a 99.3% DNA similarity threshold means it's the same species. I know this is silly and also imperfect, and I know that western taxonomy concepts like classifying triticum vs lolium are not even that objective, but... I'm allowed to want things to be orderly and consistent.
And second, there's pretty consistent understanding that chita is triticum, but I've found multiple species identifiers for zunin, by different modern translators, and zunin is one of the less controversial ones. Some species we just don't have much of a clue, or at least more than it's some kind of bean that grows in Israel.That makes this mishna hard to study, it's just a bunch of old Hebrew words nobody is quite sure of.
Kilsyim 1:2.
More of the same. Kishit and milaffon are not kilayim with each other. The first mishna was on grains and edible seeds, this one is on vegetables. Nobody seems entirely clear whether kishit and milaffon are two different kinds of cucumber, a cucumber and a melon, or two different kinds of melon. Maybe cucumbers are melons.
A lot of the species have vernacular names that impute similarity. Chazeret and mountain chazeret, for example (modern jews know chazeret as the green vegetable on the seder plate, often understood as romaine lettuce). Anyone who knows anything about plants can tell you that the names give you zero clues about how actually similar two plants are.
Kilayim 1:3
More of the same, this time featuring brassica, which is of course incredibly confusing because it's the same species but different cultivars can be radically different. The mishna seems to be able to recognize that they're all the same.
Kilayim 1:4
More of the same, but now with fruit trees. Fruit trees aren't the same because you're allowed to plant two different fruit trees next to each other because they will each maintain their own separate space, but you are not allowed to graft two fruit trees together.
Kilayim 1:5
Different, now the list is of plants that have some similarity, but they are not considered the same species and so they are kilayim with each other. Something like the Greek gourd vs the Egyptian gourd, I think this night be like brassica where the plants are the same but the fruits look very different. Wikipedia writes "Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long."
Kilayim 1:6
Animal kilayim! A wolf and a dog are kilayim. Bafflingly, a horse and a mule are kilayim even though mules are infertile. I guess I understand that very rarely a mule can have limited fertility. I think we'll get back to animals way later in the masechta, but it's a nice reminder that these rules work on similar conceptual levels.
Kilayim 1:7
You definitely can't graft a fruit tree to a fruit tree, or a vegetable plant to a vegetable plant. The Tanna Kamma and R' Yehuda argue about if you can graft a tree to a vegetable plant, R' Yehuda is mekil.
Kilayim 1:8
Examples of forbidden grafting, extremely fascinating, because they're really specific and each one doesn't just forbid the specific graft but explains the purpose behind it, like grafting a sun sensitive fig seedling in a tall bush to provide it with starting shade. I like this because it gives you a picture of historical agricultural practice.
Kilayim 1:9
Apparently in this pre refrigeration era some had the practice of burying harvested vegetables underneath grapevines for a couple days to store them safely until they would be eaten. This is not kilayim because it would be well understood that the planter would come back before they rooted, so it's not kilayim and it's not mar'is ayin.
Kilayim 1:1
It starts with a list of minim that are so similar that if they grow together it's not kilayim. The very first is chita and zunin, wheat and poison wheat. Which seems to mostly be understood as triticum aestivum and lolium temulentum, which a)are completely different genera! And b) are so interconnected that wikipedia notes that they often grow together, are often confused for each other until the seeds grow, and that lolium was historically a significant weed problem for wheat cultivators.
To make two key points, I've written a bunch about how the Rabbis' idea of min is not the modern idea of species, but for whatever reason it bugs me a lot more here. I was talking it through with someone and I think it’s because the underpinning of Kilayim is a much vague set of taxonomic distinctions than kashrut, so it's not clear what the Rabbis are working off. There’s no fins and scales type dividing lines. Is it halacha l'moshe misinai? Is it pure empirical observation, and if so, what empirical elements are prioritized? Is it folk wisdom about agriculture?
I found myself longing for a modern rule like a 99.3% DNA similarity threshold means it's the same species. I know this is silly and also imperfect, and I know that western taxonomy concepts like classifying triticum vs lolium are not even that objective, but... I'm allowed to want things to be orderly and consistent.
And second, there's pretty consistent understanding that chita is triticum, but I've found multiple species identifiers for zunin, by different modern translators, and zunin is one of the less controversial ones. Some species we just don't have much of a clue, or at least more than it's some kind of bean that grows in Israel.That makes this mishna hard to study, it's just a bunch of old Hebrew words nobody is quite sure of.
Kilsyim 1:2.
More of the same. Kishit and milaffon are not kilayim with each other. The first mishna was on grains and edible seeds, this one is on vegetables. Nobody seems entirely clear whether kishit and milaffon are two different kinds of cucumber, a cucumber and a melon, or two different kinds of melon. Maybe cucumbers are melons.
A lot of the species have vernacular names that impute similarity. Chazeret and mountain chazeret, for example (modern jews know chazeret as the green vegetable on the seder plate, often understood as romaine lettuce). Anyone who knows anything about plants can tell you that the names give you zero clues about how actually similar two plants are.
Kilayim 1:3
More of the same, this time featuring brassica, which is of course incredibly confusing because it's the same species but different cultivars can be radically different. The mishna seems to be able to recognize that they're all the same.
Kilayim 1:4
More of the same, but now with fruit trees. Fruit trees aren't the same because you're allowed to plant two different fruit trees next to each other because they will each maintain their own separate space, but you are not allowed to graft two fruit trees together.
Kilayim 1:5
Different, now the list is of plants that have some similarity, but they are not considered the same species and so they are kilayim with each other. Something like the Greek gourd vs the Egyptian gourd, I think this night be like brassica where the plants are the same but the fruits look very different. Wikipedia writes "Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long."
Kilayim 1:6
Animal kilayim! A wolf and a dog are kilayim. Bafflingly, a horse and a mule are kilayim even though mules are infertile. I guess I understand that very rarely a mule can have limited fertility. I think we'll get back to animals way later in the masechta, but it's a nice reminder that these rules work on similar conceptual levels.
Kilayim 1:7
You definitely can't graft a fruit tree to a fruit tree, or a vegetable plant to a vegetable plant. The Tanna Kamma and R' Yehuda argue about if you can graft a tree to a vegetable plant, R' Yehuda is mekil.
Kilayim 1:8
Examples of forbidden grafting, extremely fascinating, because they're really specific and each one doesn't just forbid the specific graft but explains the purpose behind it, like grafting a sun sensitive fig seedling in a tall bush to provide it with starting shade. I like this because it gives you a picture of historical agricultural practice.
Kilayim 1:9
Apparently in this pre refrigeration era some had the practice of burying harvested vegetables underneath grapevines for a couple days to store them safely until they would be eaten. This is not kilayim because it would be well understood that the planter would come back before they rooted, so it's not kilayim and it's not mar'is ayin.