Masechet Chullin Daf 12
Dec. 9th, 2018 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 12
The Gemara notes a ruling of Rav Nachman that if you ask someone (your shaliach, or representative) to shecht an animal for you, and you go away for a while, and when you come back you find the animal shechted, you can assume that it was shechted properly. Needless to say, (and the Gemara therefore doesn't say it), your shaliach must be someone you know to be fully versed in the laws and practice of shechita, and otherwise valid as a shochet. But you still might say that there's a doubt... maybe the animal was shechted improperly while you were away? This is Rav Dimi bar Yosef's question of Rav Nachman.
To intensify the question, Rav Dimi compares it to the case where you have some produce that needs to be tithed, and you authorize your shaliach your tithe it for you, and you go away and then when you come back the tithes appear to have been separated out. In this case, the ruling is that you can't rely on the shaliach, so why can you rely on your shaliach in the case of shechita?
Rav Nachman's first answer is um... a joke? Soliv, I guess the answer to your question is that the Talmud does make jokes. Rav Nachman says "It will make sense after you eat a bunch of salt." Which possibly means "It will never make sense," and possibly means "It will make sense, but you need to figure out why yourself," but it's definitely not a serious answer to the question.
And then either Rav Nachman answers or the Stam Amora answers with a more serious answer, that in both cases, you can presume that IF the shaliach performs the task, they will do it properly according to halakha, but if you just come across the act completed, you can't guarantee that it was done by the shaliach. Perhaps someone else did it. In the case of shechita, you don't care who did it as long as it was shechted properly, so it's fine to eat. In the case of the terumah tithe, it matters, because performing the terumah tithe really consists of two actions: designating the terumah for the Kohen, and separating the terumah from the rest of the produce. And the act of designating can't be done by just anybody, for it to be valid it either needs to be done by the owner or by the owner's designated representative. So if you can't be certain that your shaliach did it, you can't consider it to have been properly tithed.
But I think most of the time when we would ask a shaliach to help with a mitzvah, it's probably closer to the shechitah category than to the terumah category.
The Gemara notes a ruling of Rav Nachman that if you ask someone (your shaliach, or representative) to shecht an animal for you, and you go away for a while, and when you come back you find the animal shechted, you can assume that it was shechted properly. Needless to say, (and the Gemara therefore doesn't say it), your shaliach must be someone you know to be fully versed in the laws and practice of shechita, and otherwise valid as a shochet. But you still might say that there's a doubt... maybe the animal was shechted improperly while you were away? This is Rav Dimi bar Yosef's question of Rav Nachman.
To intensify the question, Rav Dimi compares it to the case where you have some produce that needs to be tithed, and you authorize your shaliach your tithe it for you, and you go away and then when you come back the tithes appear to have been separated out. In this case, the ruling is that you can't rely on the shaliach, so why can you rely on your shaliach in the case of shechita?
Rav Nachman's first answer is um... a joke? So
liv, I guess the answer to your question is that the Talmud does make jokes. Rav Nachman says "It will make sense after you eat a bunch of salt." Which possibly means "It will never make sense," and possibly means "It will make sense, but you need to figure out why yourself," but it's definitely not a serious answer to the question.And then either Rav Nachman answers or the Stam Amora answers with a more serious answer, that in both cases, you can presume that IF the shaliach performs the task, they will do it properly according to halakha, but if you just come across the act completed, you can't guarantee that it was done by the shaliach. Perhaps someone else did it. In the case of shechita, you don't care who did it as long as it was shechted properly, so it's fine to eat. In the case of the terumah tithe, it matters, because performing the terumah tithe really consists of two actions: designating the terumah for the Kohen, and separating the terumah from the rest of the produce. And the act of designating can't be done by just anybody, for it to be valid it either needs to be done by the owner or by the owner's designated representative. So if you can't be certain that your shaliach did it, you can't consider it to have been properly tithed.
But I think most of the time when we would ask a shaliach to help with a mitzvah, it's probably closer to the shechitah category than to the terumah category.