Masechet Chullin Daf 28 & 29
Dec. 26th, 2018 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI was down in DC yesterday for Jewmas, which involved a lot of socializing and a lot of driving time, so while I did learn the daf I didn't have time to write anything up, and I'm afraid my entry from Monday is pretty sketchy too.
On the drive home we demonstrated how learning Talmud gets in your head:
-Can indoor skydiving be called skydiving? saith my navigator, pointing to a roadside sign advertising same
-It depends on what the fundamental essence of skydiving is. If it's necessarily about being outdoors and seeing the sky and feeling the winds, then no, it can't, but if skydiving is just a name for the experience of freefalling and then parachuting, then maybe indoor skydiving can be the name for an activity that delivers the fundamental experience of skydiving in a weather-controlled venue.
-But it's called sky- diving, so there has to be sky.
-Lots of things have names that aren't fully descriptive. Like American football barely involves putting feet on the ball at all.
-But it does involve putting feet on the ball a bit.
-Okay, better example. Beach volleyball. When it's played at the Olympics, in order to deliver the proper 'beach' experience, they actually construct beaches, trucking in tons of special sand, even in places that already have beaches. Because the sand needs to be the right kind for players to move in, and needs to be able to support the structures they're going to construct on it, and so on. So clearly the essence of beach volleyball is not being on the shore of the water, the essence is the particular kind of sand. Is it nice to have water, and the breeze, and so on? Yes. But beach volleyball on an actual beach by the water is l'chatchilla, just in a sandpit bedieved. Hacha nami skydiving.
Daf 28
Continuing on from the previous daf, the Gemara is exploring where we get the laws of shechita from and how they're understood.
The ultimate rule is that the laws of shechita are oral Torah L'Moshe Misinai. But this creates a conceptual problem because of the uncertainty in the transmission of the oral tradition- what exactly is the scope of what has been transmitted? At some level, this is just a theoretical argument, but on the edges it can have meaningful implications.
The Rabbis know the laws of shechita as they are actually carried out, barring some edge cases. But they are arguing about what parts of those laws fall into four categories:
-Actual Torah law commanded in the Torah k'tiv
-Actual Torah law commanded orally L'Moshe Misinai
-Actual Torah law commanded orally L'Moshe Misinai but hinted at in the Torah k'tiv
-Rabbinic law
On Daf 28, the argument starts with the question of whether shechita of birds was taught at the same time as shechita of animals, or if it's just a Rabbinic rule that even though d'oraysa you're allowed to kill a bird by a method that'd be pasul for animals, like ikkur, d'rabbanan you must do shechita. This comes up in the case of covering blood.
The Torah commands that if you kill a kosher wild animal or bird to eat, you must cover up its blood. Like, literally cover it with dirt. If an animal just dies, you don't have to do this. So as a workaround in case you actually wanted to use the blood of an animal for some reason (perhaps, the Talmud suggests, as a red dye. Or perhaps in modern times you're doing scientific experiments), then in order to be able to not have to cover the blood, you must deliberately kill the animal with an ikkur so that you can't eat it. The question is whether you can do this maneuver with a bird. IF we say that shechita of is d'oraysa, then sure, no problem. But if it's just d'rabbanan, maybe you would still need to cover the blood even though you did ikkur, because even though it's not permitted rabbinically for you to eat it, it's still technically a kosher animal. There is a baraisa that seems to say the opposite, but those who say that shechita of is d'rabbanan just say that the baraisa is actually only about wild animals, not birds. As they in fact interpret two other apparent proofs that shechita of is d'oraysa involving esoteric cases about tumah.
The Gemara says the debate is a disagreement between two Tannaim, Rabbi Elazar Hakappar and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says that his understanding of the oral teaching from Sinai is that when Moshe Rabbenu taught the procedure of shechita behema, he also taught the procedure of shechita of. The whole passage is very frustrating from a logical perspective. It's not about reason at all, it's purely about which oral tradition is considered more reliable.
The daf continues with other cases of differences between shechita of and shechita behema. We know only one of the simanim must be cut on a bird, but the majority opinion as held by Rav Nachman is that it doesn't matter which of the simanim it is, while a minority opinion held by Rav Adda bar Ahava is that it must be the foodpipe, the veshet, not the windpipe, the gargeret. I've been using the words esophagus and trachea, but I think I am less clear that we use those terms in reference to birds, so let's call them the foodpipe and windpipe.
Lastly, we discuss Rabbi Yehuda's holding that in addition to the simanim, the primary vein in the neck must also be severed in birds. This is questioned- it emerges that he holds that this is not part of shechita itself, but is a requirement for him as part of draining the blood, as we often cook birds whole and thus don't have as easy a time draining the blood as we do with animals that are butchered before cooking. Other Rabbanim say that yes, you have to cut the vein, but it doesn't need to be as part of the same act as cutting the simanim, but Rabbi Yehuda thinks that cutting in the same act is the best way to ensure draining the blood properly. Nonetheless, even according to Rabbi Yehuda, failing to cut the vein in the same action does not make the bird unkosher, just means you need to cut the vein as soon a possible afterward.
Daf 29
The Mishna on Daf 27 said that cutting a majority of a siman was the same as cutting the whole siman. The Gemara picks up this topic and uses it to explore the broader concept of rova again. First it asks if cutting exactly halfway counts. Rav says exactly halfway counts as if it were the majority, Rav Kahana says it doesn't. They both explicitly cite Moshe Rabbenu's oral teaching at Sinai in their defense, contradictory oral teachings. Having hit this fundamental roadblock, they try to use other unrelated cases of Rova to prove their idea.
Rabbi Linzer tries to abstract this out by saying the conceptual question is whether our definition is focused on the forbidden or the allowable. If we say that any animal that has the majority cut is kosher, then halfway through is outside that bucket and thus is not kosher. If we say an animal that does not have the majority cut is not kosher, then halfway through is outside of that bucket and therefore kosher.
But then the Gemara discusses a case of a kli cheres that is tamei which breaks. The bigger piece would remain tamei, the smaller piece would be tahor. But the rule is that if the break is perfectly 50-50, then both pieces are tamei. Why? Because according to Rav Papa, you can't have two majorities. Which seems to be a catchy way of saying that this idea of framing the question of 50% as being excluded from the majority and based on which framing we use in our definition is flawed because 50% is its own situation neither in the majority or the minority.
Eventually the Gemara goes back to Rav Kahana and Rav and says that in the case of shechita, we require an actual majority, not merely 50%, and Rav Kahana and Rav both agree about that, they were actually talking about a different case that has a special 50% rule that they disagree on, about offering Karban Pesach when 50% of Israel is tamei.
This leads us to ask about an important topic of great importance to me: Measurability. When talking about discrete quantities like numbers of people, it's easy to see how you could have exactly 50-50 splits, but when talking about a continuous quantity like the circumference of a trachea, how do you know when it's been 50% cut? What does 50% mean, is it 50% by eye, 50% within the tolerances of our best measurement tools, 50% as some mythical ideal measurement we can never actually determine?
On the drive home we demonstrated how learning Talmud gets in your head:
-Can indoor skydiving be called skydiving? saith my navigator, pointing to a roadside sign advertising same
-It depends on what the fundamental essence of skydiving is. If it's necessarily about being outdoors and seeing the sky and feeling the winds, then no, it can't, but if skydiving is just a name for the experience of freefalling and then parachuting, then maybe indoor skydiving can be the name for an activity that delivers the fundamental experience of skydiving in a weather-controlled venue.
-But it's called sky- diving, so there has to be sky.
-Lots of things have names that aren't fully descriptive. Like American football barely involves putting feet on the ball at all.
-But it does involve putting feet on the ball a bit.
-Okay, better example. Beach volleyball. When it's played at the Olympics, in order to deliver the proper 'beach' experience, they actually construct beaches, trucking in tons of special sand, even in places that already have beaches. Because the sand needs to be the right kind for players to move in, and needs to be able to support the structures they're going to construct on it, and so on. So clearly the essence of beach volleyball is not being on the shore of the water, the essence is the particular kind of sand. Is it nice to have water, and the breeze, and so on? Yes. But beach volleyball on an actual beach by the water is l'chatchilla, just in a sandpit bedieved. Hacha nami skydiving.
Daf 28
Continuing on from the previous daf, the Gemara is exploring where we get the laws of shechita from and how they're understood.
The ultimate rule is that the laws of shechita are oral Torah L'Moshe Misinai. But this creates a conceptual problem because of the uncertainty in the transmission of the oral tradition- what exactly is the scope of what has been transmitted? At some level, this is just a theoretical argument, but on the edges it can have meaningful implications.
The Rabbis know the laws of shechita as they are actually carried out, barring some edge cases. But they are arguing about what parts of those laws fall into four categories:
-Actual Torah law commanded in the Torah k'tiv
-Actual Torah law commanded orally L'Moshe Misinai
-Actual Torah law commanded orally L'Moshe Misinai but hinted at in the Torah k'tiv
-Rabbinic law
On Daf 28, the argument starts with the question of whether shechita of birds was taught at the same time as shechita of animals, or if it's just a Rabbinic rule that even though d'oraysa you're allowed to kill a bird by a method that'd be pasul for animals, like ikkur, d'rabbanan you must do shechita. This comes up in the case of covering blood.
The Torah commands that if you kill a kosher wild animal or bird to eat, you must cover up its blood. Like, literally cover it with dirt. If an animal just dies, you don't have to do this. So as a workaround in case you actually wanted to use the blood of an animal for some reason (perhaps, the Talmud suggests, as a red dye. Or perhaps in modern times you're doing scientific experiments), then in order to be able to not have to cover the blood, you must deliberately kill the animal with an ikkur so that you can't eat it. The question is whether you can do this maneuver with a bird. IF we say that shechita of is d'oraysa, then sure, no problem. But if it's just d'rabbanan, maybe you would still need to cover the blood even though you did ikkur, because even though it's not permitted rabbinically for you to eat it, it's still technically a kosher animal. There is a baraisa that seems to say the opposite, but those who say that shechita of is d'rabbanan just say that the baraisa is actually only about wild animals, not birds. As they in fact interpret two other apparent proofs that shechita of is d'oraysa involving esoteric cases about tumah.
The Gemara says the debate is a disagreement between two Tannaim, Rabbi Elazar Hakappar and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says that his understanding of the oral teaching from Sinai is that when Moshe Rabbenu taught the procedure of shechita behema, he also taught the procedure of shechita of. The whole passage is very frustrating from a logical perspective. It's not about reason at all, it's purely about which oral tradition is considered more reliable.
The daf continues with other cases of differences between shechita of and shechita behema. We know only one of the simanim must be cut on a bird, but the majority opinion as held by Rav Nachman is that it doesn't matter which of the simanim it is, while a minority opinion held by Rav Adda bar Ahava is that it must be the foodpipe, the veshet, not the windpipe, the gargeret. I've been using the words esophagus and trachea, but I think I am less clear that we use those terms in reference to birds, so let's call them the foodpipe and windpipe.
Lastly, we discuss Rabbi Yehuda's holding that in addition to the simanim, the primary vein in the neck must also be severed in birds. This is questioned- it emerges that he holds that this is not part of shechita itself, but is a requirement for him as part of draining the blood, as we often cook birds whole and thus don't have as easy a time draining the blood as we do with animals that are butchered before cooking. Other Rabbanim say that yes, you have to cut the vein, but it doesn't need to be as part of the same act as cutting the simanim, but Rabbi Yehuda thinks that cutting in the same act is the best way to ensure draining the blood properly. Nonetheless, even according to Rabbi Yehuda, failing to cut the vein in the same action does not make the bird unkosher, just means you need to cut the vein as soon a possible afterward.
Daf 29
The Mishna on Daf 27 said that cutting a majority of a siman was the same as cutting the whole siman. The Gemara picks up this topic and uses it to explore the broader concept of rova again. First it asks if cutting exactly halfway counts. Rav says exactly halfway counts as if it were the majority, Rav Kahana says it doesn't. They both explicitly cite Moshe Rabbenu's oral teaching at Sinai in their defense, contradictory oral teachings. Having hit this fundamental roadblock, they try to use other unrelated cases of Rova to prove their idea.
Rabbi Linzer tries to abstract this out by saying the conceptual question is whether our definition is focused on the forbidden or the allowable. If we say that any animal that has the majority cut is kosher, then halfway through is outside that bucket and thus is not kosher. If we say an animal that does not have the majority cut is not kosher, then halfway through is outside of that bucket and therefore kosher.
But then the Gemara discusses a case of a kli cheres that is tamei which breaks. The bigger piece would remain tamei, the smaller piece would be tahor. But the rule is that if the break is perfectly 50-50, then both pieces are tamei. Why? Because according to Rav Papa, you can't have two majorities. Which seems to be a catchy way of saying that this idea of framing the question of 50% as being excluded from the majority and based on which framing we use in our definition is flawed because 50% is its own situation neither in the majority or the minority.
Eventually the Gemara goes back to Rav Kahana and Rav and says that in the case of shechita, we require an actual majority, not merely 50%, and Rav Kahana and Rav both agree about that, they were actually talking about a different case that has a special 50% rule that they disagree on, about offering Karban Pesach when 50% of Israel is tamei.
This leads us to ask about an important topic of great importance to me: Measurability. When talking about discrete quantities like numbers of people, it's easy to see how you could have exactly 50-50 splits, but when talking about a continuous quantity like the circumference of a trachea, how do you know when it's been 50% cut? What does 50% mean, is it 50% by eye, 50% within the tolerances of our best measurement tools, 50% as some mythical ideal measurement we can never actually determine?