Masechet Chullin Daf 27
Dec. 25th, 2018 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 27
The previous daf closed out the first perek of Chullin. We start the new perek with the basic law of shechita, which was touched on tangentially in the first perek, but here we cover it head on. To shecht an animal, you need to sever both the trachea and esophagus. To shecht a bird, you need to only sever one of the two. And in both cases, severing the majority of a pipe is sufficient to say that you severed the pipe, although the language about what case this is talking about is confusing and I think the Gemara will have more to say about this in further pages.
The majority of the page is taken up on a very particular and peculiar structural conceit. The Gemara goes through a series of explanations of what verse we learn the mechanism of shechita from. Each is a drash on a word in one of the numerous verses that mention killing an animal, explaining how a particular word, broken into constituent parts, refers to the throat of the animal as needing to be severed but only enough that the blood and breath are spilled, not enough to break through.
But after each drash, from Rav Kahana, Rav Yeimar, and a student of Rabbi Yishmael, the Gemara says "Wait a minute... our tradition is that the specifics of shechita are an oral tradition from Sinai, not that it comes from a verse. So why are you telling me this verse?" The answer each time is the idea that rules that are transmitted as part of the oral tradition have hints to their practice in the written text, and the verses the Rabbanim are drashing are hints that help cue certain elements of the oral law.
The previous daf closed out the first perek of Chullin. We start the new perek with the basic law of shechita, which was touched on tangentially in the first perek, but here we cover it head on. To shecht an animal, you need to sever both the trachea and esophagus. To shecht a bird, you need to only sever one of the two. And in both cases, severing the majority of a pipe is sufficient to say that you severed the pipe, although the language about what case this is talking about is confusing and I think the Gemara will have more to say about this in further pages.
The majority of the page is taken up on a very particular and peculiar structural conceit. The Gemara goes through a series of explanations of what verse we learn the mechanism of shechita from. Each is a drash on a word in one of the numerous verses that mention killing an animal, explaining how a particular word, broken into constituent parts, refers to the throat of the animal as needing to be severed but only enough that the blood and breath are spilled, not enough to break through.
But after each drash, from Rav Kahana, Rav Yeimar, and a student of Rabbi Yishmael, the Gemara says "Wait a minute... our tradition is that the specifics of shechita are an oral tradition from Sinai, not that it comes from a verse. So why are you telling me this verse?" The answer each time is the idea that rules that are transmitted as part of the oral tradition have hints to their practice in the written text, and the verses the Rabbanim are drashing are hints that help cue certain elements of the oral law.