Masechet Chullin Daf 34 and 35
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seekingferretDaf 34
The Gemara continues the discussion from the previous daf on the susceptibility of meat that has not had the blood removed to tumah from unclean hands. As I described yesterday, the general case of unclean hands is a Rabbinic gezeirah of tumah of sheni, but this can't be the case the Mishna is describing because tumah of sheni does not transmit to chullin food.
The Gemara proposed in the previous daf that one possible explanation was that the chullin was chullin where one made a neder to treat it as kodshim, perhaps because one commonly handled both chullin and kodshim and wanted to make sure they didn't get mixed up. We explore this concept further on this daf.
Rabbi Elazar cites a Tannaic dispute between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer and says that it is consistent to understand this explanation of the Mishna as consistent with Rabbi Eliezer's position. Well, no, it doesn't say that. It says it is consistent to understand it "Not according to Rabbi Yehoshua's position". Why does it frame it that way. Rabbi Elefant says there are several explanations but the major one from the Rishonim is that it's because of Rabbi Eliezer's unusual position in the Talmud that Rabbi Elazar didn't want to cite his ruling approvingly.
Rabbi Eliezer is the star of Benjamin Rosenbaum's magic cucumber story.. He was one of the most important Tannaim, but at some point in his life he did something heretical and was excommunicated from the community. It's an incredibly sad story, but the point is the Rabbis were left in this awkward position where they couldn't reject the whole mass of Rabbi Eliezer's body of Rabbinic scholarship, but they didn't want to endorse him too strongly lest people get the wrong idea. So we see circumlocutions like this.
And in fact if you read this daf through the lens of this story, a fascinating dynamic emerges. The Gemara spends the whole page constructing arguments to justify saying that the halakha is consistent with Rabbi Yehoshua's position simply in order to not have to say that the halakha is in accordance with Rabbi Eliezer. In the end, it resolves as an Amoraic dispute between Ulla and Rabbah Bar Bar Hana about whether it is possible to reconcile Rabbi Yehoshua with this interpretation of the Mishna.
Daf 35
The Gemara continues discussion of special cases of tumah and tahara involving eating chullin and its interactions with eating terumah and kodshim, which are not permitted to be eaten by someone who is tamei.
These discussions of tumah and tahara are tricky. For two reasons.
First, this is not an area of Jewish law that is much dwelt on in modern times because it is basically totally irrelevant to modern halakha. Since we don't have a Beis Hamikdash, most of the consequences of being tamei are irrelevant. We maintain some of the practices involving mikvah, and some practices with dishes and handwashing and so on at least exist as memories of the practice in the days of Beis Hamikdash, but the ideas about purity tied up in these concepts, that were central to ancient Judaism, are not central to most Jewish practice today.
Second, these laws are incredibly complicated. (And interestingly, it's my understanding that the genesis of some of the sectarianism of the Second Temple period was a sense that the Rabbis were too lenient on tahara! The Qumran sect and the Essenes retreated into caves where they could live lives of extreme devotion to the laws of religious purity.)
The basic idea of purity is that tumah, impurity, is not inherently a good or bad thing, it's just a spiritual status that accords to certain physical experiences, which are not to be associated with the Temple worship because the Temple service is about devotion to God and elevating the spiritual over the physical through acts of separation. So a dead body or animal carcass is impure. A dead insect is impure. A woman menstruating is impure, a man who has had a seminal emission is impure. Touching these things is not forbidden, it's not an aveirah to become tamei. But if you are tamei, there are certain acts associated with holy objects that are forbidden to you until you are purified.
All of these are described in the Torah, and by close reading of the verses that discuss this status, the subtly different laws of how they operate are derived. In different circumstances, the impurity of one of the impure objects or people can be transmitted, by contact or by proximity or by some particular action. And in different circumstances depending on the source of the tumah, different acts can purify.
In general, tumah goes down a level each time it is transmitted. A primary impure object renders a thing it touches secondarily impure. A secondarily impure object renders the thing it touches tertiarily impure. For many classes of object, secondary tumah is the limit, so if an object that is already carrying secondary tumah touches such an object, it does not become pure.
But as we're discovering on these dapim, there are many, many exceptions and complications to these laws. In some of the cases discussed here, you can actually go up a level by eating an impure food! This is a Rabbinic gezeirah to make it less likely that you'll violate the law of contaminating terumah.
And like I said, the Rabbis were relatively lenient compared to the Essenes. :P
When considering these pages, I try to think about how to find the Jewish value of taharah in modern times. We're no longer worried about contaminating terumah or being unable to offer sacrifices, but we still believe there is value in maintaining separation between the physical and the spiritual. Obviously this is still relevant to hilchos niddah, but that's... not so relevant to me at the moment. But... to a large extent davening has replaced Temple sacrifice in the Jewish ritual, and it seems like we should pay attention to some analogues of purity here, too. Figuring out how to put ourselves in a holy state of mind when we are praying by paying attention to the state of our bodies.
The Gemara continues the discussion from the previous daf on the susceptibility of meat that has not had the blood removed to tumah from unclean hands. As I described yesterday, the general case of unclean hands is a Rabbinic gezeirah of tumah of sheni, but this can't be the case the Mishna is describing because tumah of sheni does not transmit to chullin food.
The Gemara proposed in the previous daf that one possible explanation was that the chullin was chullin where one made a neder to treat it as kodshim, perhaps because one commonly handled both chullin and kodshim and wanted to make sure they didn't get mixed up. We explore this concept further on this daf.
Rabbi Elazar cites a Tannaic dispute between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer and says that it is consistent to understand this explanation of the Mishna as consistent with Rabbi Eliezer's position. Well, no, it doesn't say that. It says it is consistent to understand it "Not according to Rabbi Yehoshua's position". Why does it frame it that way. Rabbi Elefant says there are several explanations but the major one from the Rishonim is that it's because of Rabbi Eliezer's unusual position in the Talmud that Rabbi Elazar didn't want to cite his ruling approvingly.
Rabbi Eliezer is the star of Benjamin Rosenbaum's magic cucumber story.. He was one of the most important Tannaim, but at some point in his life he did something heretical and was excommunicated from the community. It's an incredibly sad story, but the point is the Rabbis were left in this awkward position where they couldn't reject the whole mass of Rabbi Eliezer's body of Rabbinic scholarship, but they didn't want to endorse him too strongly lest people get the wrong idea. So we see circumlocutions like this.
And in fact if you read this daf through the lens of this story, a fascinating dynamic emerges. The Gemara spends the whole page constructing arguments to justify saying that the halakha is consistent with Rabbi Yehoshua's position simply in order to not have to say that the halakha is in accordance with Rabbi Eliezer. In the end, it resolves as an Amoraic dispute between Ulla and Rabbah Bar Bar Hana about whether it is possible to reconcile Rabbi Yehoshua with this interpretation of the Mishna.
Daf 35
The Gemara continues discussion of special cases of tumah and tahara involving eating chullin and its interactions with eating terumah and kodshim, which are not permitted to be eaten by someone who is tamei.
These discussions of tumah and tahara are tricky. For two reasons.
First, this is not an area of Jewish law that is much dwelt on in modern times because it is basically totally irrelevant to modern halakha. Since we don't have a Beis Hamikdash, most of the consequences of being tamei are irrelevant. We maintain some of the practices involving mikvah, and some practices with dishes and handwashing and so on at least exist as memories of the practice in the days of Beis Hamikdash, but the ideas about purity tied up in these concepts, that were central to ancient Judaism, are not central to most Jewish practice today.
Second, these laws are incredibly complicated. (And interestingly, it's my understanding that the genesis of some of the sectarianism of the Second Temple period was a sense that the Rabbis were too lenient on tahara! The Qumran sect and the Essenes retreated into caves where they could live lives of extreme devotion to the laws of religious purity.)
The basic idea of purity is that tumah, impurity, is not inherently a good or bad thing, it's just a spiritual status that accords to certain physical experiences, which are not to be associated with the Temple worship because the Temple service is about devotion to God and elevating the spiritual over the physical through acts of separation. So a dead body or animal carcass is impure. A dead insect is impure. A woman menstruating is impure, a man who has had a seminal emission is impure. Touching these things is not forbidden, it's not an aveirah to become tamei. But if you are tamei, there are certain acts associated with holy objects that are forbidden to you until you are purified.
All of these are described in the Torah, and by close reading of the verses that discuss this status, the subtly different laws of how they operate are derived. In different circumstances, the impurity of one of the impure objects or people can be transmitted, by contact or by proximity or by some particular action. And in different circumstances depending on the source of the tumah, different acts can purify.
In general, tumah goes down a level each time it is transmitted. A primary impure object renders a thing it touches secondarily impure. A secondarily impure object renders the thing it touches tertiarily impure. For many classes of object, secondary tumah is the limit, so if an object that is already carrying secondary tumah touches such an object, it does not become pure.
But as we're discovering on these dapim, there are many, many exceptions and complications to these laws. In some of the cases discussed here, you can actually go up a level by eating an impure food! This is a Rabbinic gezeirah to make it less likely that you'll violate the law of contaminating terumah.
And like I said, the Rabbis were relatively lenient compared to the Essenes. :P
When considering these pages, I try to think about how to find the Jewish value of taharah in modern times. We're no longer worried about contaminating terumah or being unable to offer sacrifices, but we still believe there is value in maintaining separation between the physical and the spiritual. Obviously this is still relevant to hilchos niddah, but that's... not so relevant to me at the moment. But... to a large extent davening has replaced Temple sacrifice in the Jewish ritual, and it seems like we should pay attention to some analogues of purity here, too. Figuring out how to put ourselves in a holy state of mind when we are praying by paying attention to the state of our bodies.