Masechet Chullin Daf 52 & 53
Jan. 24th, 2019 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretIt's going to take me some time to catch back up.
Daf 52
More on treifos. Reminder, the word treifa means torn and refers to certain defects in internal organs that render an animal prohibited to be eaten (but not tamei). The Gemara learns that generally these treifas are injuries that would result in an animal not surviving a year (at least according to the dominant opinion), but that's just generally the rule. Treifa is part of the halakha l'Moshe Misinai of shechita, there doesn't need to be any logic to any of the rules.
Here we start discussing some treifas from the original Mishna that don't seem to physically involve a tear of an internal organ. The Gemara has some different ideas of how to conceptualize them as treifas in spite of this basic problem of vocabulary.
First is a fallen animal. If an animal falls off a roof, even if there's no evidence of an internal tear, it's a treifa. We could conceptualize this as being an assumption that if it experienced this kind of trauma, there must have been some damage, even if we can't find evidence of it. That's certainly one way to read the Gemara. There's also some idea that a fall causes a loosening of the bones, some sort of musculoskeletal tear that you can't see that is nonetheless a treifa.
We distinguish between a fall and a jump. If an animal jumps, we presume it did so in a way that it can land safely. And in fact that gives us the definition of a fall- If the animal lands on its feet, it's not a fall but a jump.
Daf 53
A different kind of ambiguous treifa, a clawing. If a wolf claws an animal, said the Mishna, it's a treifa even if there's no internal tear found. Again, we could conceptualize this as being an assumption that if it experienced this kind of trauma, there must have been some damage, even if we can't find evidence of it. But the Gemara much more clearly understands d'risa as being about a kind of poison in the claws of wolves that renders clawed animals treifas.
In terms of modern biology, this is patently untrue. (There was a funny moment in Rabbi Linzer's shiur where one of his students googled venom coming out of claws, to see if there was some other animal that wasn't a wolf that had this property, and reported that his first hit was for Chullin Daf 52-53) We could attempt a bacterial explanation- the Rabbis observed that animals clawed by wolves tended to get sick, and not having a germ theory, they called it poison.
But this doesn't hold together all that well. The Rabbis have a very clear description of the mechanism of this poison- it is a volitional act of the animal, so if there is incidental contact with the claw that is not part of the attack, we don't assume poison was deployed. And it happens when the claw is removed from the animal, so if the claw gets stuck we assume the poison wasn't deployed. And it's a property of the front claws but not the rear claws, and it's not a property of teeth, and it's a property of some predators but not others, and in all sorts of ways a bacterial explanation doesn't fit. Some contemporary Rabbis say that the Rabbis were describing animals that no longer exist, or subspecies of wolf that no longer exist.
So yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to imagine us taking the bacterial explanation today, because it would raise interesting new questions in a world of antibiotics, but that's not likely to happen.
Daf 52
More on treifos. Reminder, the word treifa means torn and refers to certain defects in internal organs that render an animal prohibited to be eaten (but not tamei). The Gemara learns that generally these treifas are injuries that would result in an animal not surviving a year (at least according to the dominant opinion), but that's just generally the rule. Treifa is part of the halakha l'Moshe Misinai of shechita, there doesn't need to be any logic to any of the rules.
Here we start discussing some treifas from the original Mishna that don't seem to physically involve a tear of an internal organ. The Gemara has some different ideas of how to conceptualize them as treifas in spite of this basic problem of vocabulary.
First is a fallen animal. If an animal falls off a roof, even if there's no evidence of an internal tear, it's a treifa. We could conceptualize this as being an assumption that if it experienced this kind of trauma, there must have been some damage, even if we can't find evidence of it. That's certainly one way to read the Gemara. There's also some idea that a fall causes a loosening of the bones, some sort of musculoskeletal tear that you can't see that is nonetheless a treifa.
We distinguish between a fall and a jump. If an animal jumps, we presume it did so in a way that it can land safely. And in fact that gives us the definition of a fall- If the animal lands on its feet, it's not a fall but a jump.
Daf 53
A different kind of ambiguous treifa, a clawing. If a wolf claws an animal, said the Mishna, it's a treifa even if there's no internal tear found. Again, we could conceptualize this as being an assumption that if it experienced this kind of trauma, there must have been some damage, even if we can't find evidence of it. But the Gemara much more clearly understands d'risa as being about a kind of poison in the claws of wolves that renders clawed animals treifas.
In terms of modern biology, this is patently untrue. (There was a funny moment in Rabbi Linzer's shiur where one of his students googled venom coming out of claws, to see if there was some other animal that wasn't a wolf that had this property, and reported that his first hit was for Chullin Daf 52-53) We could attempt a bacterial explanation- the Rabbis observed that animals clawed by wolves tended to get sick, and not having a germ theory, they called it poison.
But this doesn't hold together all that well. The Rabbis have a very clear description of the mechanism of this poison- it is a volitional act of the animal, so if there is incidental contact with the claw that is not part of the attack, we don't assume poison was deployed. And it happens when the claw is removed from the animal, so if the claw gets stuck we assume the poison wasn't deployed. And it's a property of the front claws but not the rear claws, and it's not a property of teeth, and it's a property of some predators but not others, and in all sorts of ways a bacterial explanation doesn't fit. Some contemporary Rabbis say that the Rabbis were describing animals that no longer exist, or subspecies of wolf that no longer exist.
So yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to imagine us taking the bacterial explanation today, because it would raise interesting new questions in a world of antibiotics, but that's not likely to happen.