Masechet Chullin Daf 57/58/59
Jan. 27th, 2019 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 57
A really great example of the Gemara itself working through the question of what to do when a Rabbi's teaching is scientifically questionable.
The Mishna on the previous page listed treifas for birds. As I mentioned, it was a much shorter list than the Mishna at the start of the perek about treifas for animals. In particular, there is no mention of any treifas involving lungs. Nevertheless, the Gemara's assumption is that there can be treifas involving lungs, and in fact, halakha l'maaseh today is that the lungs are one of the only places on birds that we do affirmatively check for treifas even if we don't have any reason to suspect a treifa.
But Chizkiya makes a bold statement. Ein raya l'of. There are no lungs on a bird.
What!!!
Rabbi Yochanan immediately says wait a minute, there are lungs on birds. And for good measure he describes what they look like. So fine, we're not out on this ridiculous position for very long. But what is the Gemara doing bringing this ridiculous opinion that birds don't have lungs at all? That's what we're going to ask now.
The Gemara's first attempt to explain it is to go back to my note about the Mishna. The Mishna didn't mention lungs, so perhaps Chizkiya is trying to say not that birds don't have lungs, but that for halakhic purposes we treat birds as if they don't have lungs, i.e. we don't consider whether the lung might have a treifa.
But this is plainly not right, because again of the baraisa in the name of Levi that unless the anatomy is different, all the treifas of animals apply to birds. So the Gemara tries again.
So the Gemara's second attempt to explain it is to say that perhaps Chizkiya is saying that when it comes to the special halachos of treifa involving birds, lungs are not considered. There are special checks on the liver, heart, and gizzard of birds that have been exposed to fire to see if they've been damaged, for example. Perhaps Chizkiya is saying that we consider a bird as not having lungs for purposes of this analysis.
But the Gemara objects that this can't explain Chizkiya's statement because if that had been his meaning, Rabbi Yochanan would not have objected as he did, by saying that birds do have lungs and this is what they look like. Rabbi Yochanan was responding as if Chizkiya was stating that birds don't actually have lungs.
The Gemara brings a conclusion in the name of Rabbi Yosei ben Chanina that... Chizkiya just doesn't know much about chickens.
This is a really satisfying discussion of how to deal with statements in the Gemara that don't seem to match our scientific understanding. First, we do everything we can to try to understand them in a viable context, and when we've exhausted all of our options there, we can finally set aside the statement and conclude that it was based on an incorrect understanding of the science.
Daf 58
As I wrote yesterday, there's this notion that a treifa is an animal that meets certain technical qualifications- it has a wound on an internal organ that will result in it dying. And there's a notion that a treifa is an animal that meets certain arbitrary qualifications- Moshe taught a set of treifas and we just have that tradition of what the treifas are.
Here the Gemara tackles the former principle and tries to define what constitutes dying. In other words, once it gets the wound, does it have to die right away? Within days? Within weeks? Years? What if sometimes it gets better, do we still treat it as a treifa?
As a general rule we seem to hold much more by the non-empirical idea of treifa, so it's unclear just how relevant practically the question is, but maybe if there are Rishonic disagreements about whether something is a treifa, we can use this question of whether animals recover from it as a mechanism for resolution.
In any case, there are a variety of opinions, that three months is the period you check to see if it survives, or that two to three years is the period... The most agreed upon period seems to be a year, and it actually seems to derive from the three month idea, but with a twist. It's suggested that there are some ailments that animals are likely to die from in the summer, and some that they're more likely to die from in the winter. I guess because the heat exacerbates the wound, or the cold, or something like that. So the three month period is the idea that if the animal with that wound is able to survive the bad season, it'd not be a treifa. And twelve months means that whichever the bad season is for a particular treifa, we know the animal has passed it.
Daf 59
Ugh, I wish it weren't 11PM and that I wasn't three dapim behind, because this daf is kind of the reason I'm doing this and I do not have the energy or brainpower to discuss this daf right now. So let me say a little briefly and commit to writing more thoroughly about this daf in the next week or so.
We're done with treifas for the moment. The new Mishna goes over the characteristics of kosher animals and birds and insects, vs. the characteristics of nonkosher ones. This is Judaism 101- kosher animals need fins and scales. Kosher fish need hooves and chewing their cud. Yes, I flipped that as a joke and not because it's 11PM and I don't have the energy or brainpower to discuss this, but only barely. And birds there are no such defining characteristics, we just have a list of the kosher birds, and this is sort of a problem. The Mishna says that actually, we know that the nonkosher birds are the birds that are birds of prey. But it's more complicated than that, what exactly is a bird of prey is complicated, and whether we can eat a bird just because we know it's not a bird of prey, without a tradition of knowing it's kosher. The Gemara will go deeper into this in further pages.
And then it starts to look at other simanim of kosher and unkosher animals. Why? Because sometimes the Torah's simanim are inconvenient. You can't check if an animal chews its cud without dissecting it, and that means you can't check without killing it, but what if you don't want to kill it in case it turns out not to be kosher, and you only have the one examplar around.
So if there is some characteristic of the teeth, or the horns, that can tell you what makes an animal kosher, that'd be really handy. The Gemara goes through some examples, but I'll go into this more later.
What I do want to mention now is that the Gemara discusses the keresh as an example of a wild kosher animal that it says has one horn. Kosher Unicorn!!!
A really great example of the Gemara itself working through the question of what to do when a Rabbi's teaching is scientifically questionable.
The Mishna on the previous page listed treifas for birds. As I mentioned, it was a much shorter list than the Mishna at the start of the perek about treifas for animals. In particular, there is no mention of any treifas involving lungs. Nevertheless, the Gemara's assumption is that there can be treifas involving lungs, and in fact, halakha l'maaseh today is that the lungs are one of the only places on birds that we do affirmatively check for treifas even if we don't have any reason to suspect a treifa.
But Chizkiya makes a bold statement. Ein raya l'of. There are no lungs on a bird.
What!!!
Rabbi Yochanan immediately says wait a minute, there are lungs on birds. And for good measure he describes what they look like. So fine, we're not out on this ridiculous position for very long. But what is the Gemara doing bringing this ridiculous opinion that birds don't have lungs at all? That's what we're going to ask now.
The Gemara's first attempt to explain it is to go back to my note about the Mishna. The Mishna didn't mention lungs, so perhaps Chizkiya is trying to say not that birds don't have lungs, but that for halakhic purposes we treat birds as if they don't have lungs, i.e. we don't consider whether the lung might have a treifa.
But this is plainly not right, because again of the baraisa in the name of Levi that unless the anatomy is different, all the treifas of animals apply to birds. So the Gemara tries again.
So the Gemara's second attempt to explain it is to say that perhaps Chizkiya is saying that when it comes to the special halachos of treifa involving birds, lungs are not considered. There are special checks on the liver, heart, and gizzard of birds that have been exposed to fire to see if they've been damaged, for example. Perhaps Chizkiya is saying that we consider a bird as not having lungs for purposes of this analysis.
But the Gemara objects that this can't explain Chizkiya's statement because if that had been his meaning, Rabbi Yochanan would not have objected as he did, by saying that birds do have lungs and this is what they look like. Rabbi Yochanan was responding as if Chizkiya was stating that birds don't actually have lungs.
The Gemara brings a conclusion in the name of Rabbi Yosei ben Chanina that... Chizkiya just doesn't know much about chickens.
This is a really satisfying discussion of how to deal with statements in the Gemara that don't seem to match our scientific understanding. First, we do everything we can to try to understand them in a viable context, and when we've exhausted all of our options there, we can finally set aside the statement and conclude that it was based on an incorrect understanding of the science.
Daf 58
As I wrote yesterday, there's this notion that a treifa is an animal that meets certain technical qualifications- it has a wound on an internal organ that will result in it dying. And there's a notion that a treifa is an animal that meets certain arbitrary qualifications- Moshe taught a set of treifas and we just have that tradition of what the treifas are.
Here the Gemara tackles the former principle and tries to define what constitutes dying. In other words, once it gets the wound, does it have to die right away? Within days? Within weeks? Years? What if sometimes it gets better, do we still treat it as a treifa?
As a general rule we seem to hold much more by the non-empirical idea of treifa, so it's unclear just how relevant practically the question is, but maybe if there are Rishonic disagreements about whether something is a treifa, we can use this question of whether animals recover from it as a mechanism for resolution.
In any case, there are a variety of opinions, that three months is the period you check to see if it survives, or that two to three years is the period... The most agreed upon period seems to be a year, and it actually seems to derive from the three month idea, but with a twist. It's suggested that there are some ailments that animals are likely to die from in the summer, and some that they're more likely to die from in the winter. I guess because the heat exacerbates the wound, or the cold, or something like that. So the three month period is the idea that if the animal with that wound is able to survive the bad season, it'd not be a treifa. And twelve months means that whichever the bad season is for a particular treifa, we know the animal has passed it.
Daf 59
Ugh, I wish it weren't 11PM and that I wasn't three dapim behind, because this daf is kind of the reason I'm doing this and I do not have the energy or brainpower to discuss this daf right now. So let me say a little briefly and commit to writing more thoroughly about this daf in the next week or so.
We're done with treifas for the moment. The new Mishna goes over the characteristics of kosher animals and birds and insects, vs. the characteristics of nonkosher ones. This is Judaism 101- kosher animals need fins and scales. Kosher fish need hooves and chewing their cud. Yes, I flipped that as a joke and not because it's 11PM and I don't have the energy or brainpower to discuss this, but only barely. And birds there are no such defining characteristics, we just have a list of the kosher birds, and this is sort of a problem. The Mishna says that actually, we know that the nonkosher birds are the birds that are birds of prey. But it's more complicated than that, what exactly is a bird of prey is complicated, and whether we can eat a bird just because we know it's not a bird of prey, without a tradition of knowing it's kosher. The Gemara will go deeper into this in further pages.
And then it starts to look at other simanim of kosher and unkosher animals. Why? Because sometimes the Torah's simanim are inconvenient. You can't check if an animal chews its cud without dissecting it, and that means you can't check without killing it, but what if you don't want to kill it in case it turns out not to be kosher, and you only have the one examplar around.
So if there is some characteristic of the teeth, or the horns, that can tell you what makes an animal kosher, that'd be really handy. The Gemara goes through some examples, but I'll go into this more later.
What I do want to mention now is that the Gemara discusses the keresh as an example of a wild kosher animal that it says has one horn. Kosher Unicorn!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-28 09:36 pm (UTC)The Gemara's first attempt to explain it is to go back to my note about the Mishna. The Mishna didn't mention lungs, so perhaps Chizkiya is trying to say not that birds don't have lungs, but that for halakhic purposes we treat birds as if they don't have lungs, i.e. we don't consider whether the lung might have a treifa.
But this is plainly not right, because again of the baraisa in the name of Levi that unless the anatomy is different, all the treifas of animals apply to birds. So the Gemara tries again.
So the Gemara's second attempt to explain it is to say that perhaps Chizkiya is saying that when it comes to the special halachos of treifa involving birds, lungs are not considered. There are special checks on the liver, heart, and gizzard of birds that have been exposed to fire to see if they've been damaged, for example. Perhaps Chizkiya is saying that we consider a bird as not having lungs for purposes of this analysis.
But the Gemara objects that this can't explain Chizkiya's statement because if that had been his meaning, Rabbi Yochanan would not have objected as he did, by saying that birds do have lungs and this is what they look like. Rabbi Yochanan was responding as if Chizkiya was stating that birds don't actually have lungs.
I'm not quite sure how those two reasonings are different? Both seem to be saying, "Perhaps Chizkiya is saying that for halakhic purposes, we will treat birds as if they do not have lungs, For Reasons (even though we know they do)". What is the difference?
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-28 09:59 pm (UTC)The specific halakhic explanations are slightly different.
In the first explanation, Chizkiya is saying when it comes to animals, the lungs must not have any punctures, and they must not have any adhesions, but when it comes to birds, even if the lungs have a puncture or adhesion, it can still be kosher.
In the second explanation, Chizkiya is saying that both in birds and animals, the lungs must not have any punctures or adhesions. However, if a bird was in a fire, we need to check its heart, liver, and gizzard to see if they have turned greenish and are therefore not kosher. But we don't need to check its lungs.
So in the first explanation, Chizkiya is focused on the general laws of treifas and how they relate to bird lungs, and in the second he is focused on the specific laws of bird treifas and how they apply to bird lungs.
The Gemara could have applied its second rationale for rejection to the first theory. Rabbi Yochanan was responding as if Chizkiya was stating that birds don't actually have lungs, so any theory that tries to say that he didn't really mean that birds don't actually have lungs is going to have the same problem. Why did the Gemara instead invoke the baraisa in the name of Levi?
[First, let me explain what a baraisa is. The Talmud consists of the Mishna, which was compiled in the second century CE, and the Gemara, a commentary on the Mishna compiled in the 6th or 7th century CE. Baraisa refers to other teachings that are contemporaneous with the Mishna which were not written down in the Mishna, but which were still transmitted orally. The Gemara frequently cites them as support for their arguments. Since they represent teachings from the Mishnaic era they have more authority than later teachings.]
Understanding why the Gemara uses one argument over another is at the heart of why Talmud is so complicated to study. I can come up with some more detailed theories of why they chose the particular arrangement of arguments, but I think the main idea I want to communicate is that they chose to use both arguments because they wanted to teach both arguments. In addition to the theme of how do we analyze a false scientific argument in a halakhic context that I blogged about, the Gemara is accomplishing several other objectives in this passage that I didn't write about, including teaching us that lungs are, in fact, not included in the check of a bird that was in a fire, and reinforcing the teaching that we do check bird lungs to make sure they don't have any of the defects that would invalidate an animal. That's indicative of the information density of the Talmud, accomplishing all these things at once!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-29 11:05 am (UTC)I think I see what you mean about the information density and the importance of invoking the baraisa in the name of Levi. Knowing that baraisa in the name of Levi could be very important for settling another question unrelated to lungs, so even if it isn't necessary to settle this argument, it's a useful tool to have available for thought. And it's relevant enough here to work in without it being a distraction. (And of course you're giving me this in a compressed form - thanks - but I wonder just how similar or different the anatomy has to be for relevance. (In function? Or in size/shape/ease of checking treifa? A question for another time, unless it was already covered, anyway!)
(Thanks - I did know what the Gemara and what the Misha are at one time, but was rusty on them; I had not encountered the term baraisa before.)
I hope the question is not an imposition - I realise that since you mentioned you're pressed for time here, this was perhaps not the best timing to put my hand up! I look forward to hearing more about the kosher unicorn.
(On first reading, where I was stumped, it looked a little like "The Gemara tries to find the way to understanding Chizkiya's statement in [this way]. But for reason 1, this is ruled out. The Gemara tries to find the way to understanding Chizkiya's statement in [essentially same way, where I would have expected a different way]. But for reason 2, this was ruled out," where, for that sense, the expected structure would look more like "Reason 1 and Reason 2 both rule out Chizkiya's position[, but not because we understand Chizkiya's position differently each time].")
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-29 01:55 pm (UTC)I wonder just how similar or different the anatomy has to be for relevance. (In function? Or in size/shape/ease of checking treifa? A question for another time, unless it was already covered, anyway!)
This is the fundamental question! And it's not really addressed by the Gemara here in much detail. I think we might return to the topic of treifas later and delve deeper, or maybe it's just addressed in the Rishonic literature and I'll need to check the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch to see how they approach it.
But yes, since the Gemara doesn't address this question in detail, it's important to notice how they do reference it, even tangentially, since that's how you learn how to to apply the principle to other cases.
Sometimes the Gemara explains why it is asking a question in a certain way: There was a discussion I didn't gloss a few pages ago about the ribs of an animal and how many need to be dislodged from the spine for the animal to be kosher where the Gemara noted that two scholars had framed their question in a certain way because they wanted their teacher's answer to answer two questions at once. But usually the Gemara doesn't explain why it arranges questions and answers in a certain way, and it can be hard, but useful, to figure out the reason.