Masechet Chullin Daf 68/69
Feb. 5th, 2019 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 68
New perek! Perek dalet is about whether a fetus inside a behema when the mother was shechted is kosher or not. The halakha is that yes, it is, even without separate shechita, because it's considered part of the mother. But that just leads us to some interesting edge cases. Which is... kind of interesting, but not particularly practically relevant.
The Mishna says that if the mother is undergoing a difficult pregnancy and the fetal calf extends a leg out of the mother, and then retracts it, *it* is still kosher. However, if the fetal calf extends its head out of the mother, then that is considered a birth even if it retracts the head. (And therefore since it's been born, it would need its own separate shechita if that's possible if you wanted to eat it.)
The second half of the Mishna says that if you cut into the womb and removed a limb from the fetus (Probably because it's a difficult childbirth and you want to make the delivery easier), it does not count as ever min hachai and is permitted to be eaten once you've shechted the mother, but if you cut into a behema and removed a kidney, it would be ever min hachai and thus the kidney would be prohibited even though it would not render the behema a treifa and the behema would be permitted to be eaten once shechted.
The second part of the mishna effectively crystallizes the unusual status of the fetus- it's a part of the mother in some ways (the mother's shechita counts for it) but not in others.
From the first part of the Mishna, the rest of the daf explores opinions deriving from different ways of reading the *it*. that is still kosher. Is *it* referring to the fetus in toto, or is it referring to the limb that was extended, or is referring to the fetus in toto except for the limb?
Rabbi Yehuda teaches in the name of Rav (and later in the name of both Rav and Shmuel) that the halakha is that the limb itself once extended is not kosher, but if it unextends before shechita, then the rest of the fetus is kosher. It derives this from a surprising reading of the verse about the treifos. Shemos 22:30. ובשר בשדה טרפה לא תאכלו. What does בשדה add to the verse? Apparently this encodes a broader concept of the natural space in which a particular kind of meat is supposed to be in order to hold a certain status. For example, if a sacrificial animal is in the Temple courtyard and then is removed from the courtyard, it permanently takes on the status of being prohibited.
According to Rav in this case, the natural שדה of the fetus is inside the womb for it to maintain the status of being connected to the mother, so when it exits the womb it permanently loses this status. Thus a limb that leaves the womb and then returns maintains its status of having exited the womb and is thus forbidden to eat.
This is not the most natural reading of the Mishna, and the Gemara tries a variety of ways to refute it, but it does not. Ulla in the name of Rabbi Yochanan argues that Shemos 22:30 should be limited to just the case of chatas offerings, since there is an explicit pasuk in Vayikra where the idea of permanent ban on chatas removed from the Temple courtyard comes from, but the Gemara refutes this since there is also a pasuk in Devarim from which the Gemara derives midrashically that bikurim are not subject to this ban, and therefore the pasuk in Shemos is needed to demonstrate that fetuses leaving their womb are subject to this prohibition.
When Rabbi Yochanan enters the dispute, this becomes a disagreement between him as the leader in early Amoraic Eretz Yisrael, against Rav and Shmuel as the leaders in early Amoraic Babylon. Even after Rabbi Yochanan's imputed position is conclusively refuted, the Gemara still seems to think there was a disagreement between the two areas about something, so it suggests instead that Rav held that the limb exiting the womb counted in some manner as 'birth' and therefore the whole limb was invalidated if a majority left the womb, whereas Rabbi Yochanan held that the limb exiting was not birth, and only the part of the limb that left the womb is invalidated.
Daf 69
I think it is pretty logical that the fetus would be kosher to eat and not require an additional shechita if found inside a properly shechted mother, but... what if the fetus was fairly well developed and viable, and after you remove it from the mother you raise it... Does it need shechita if you want to eat it? No, its mother's shechita counts for it even years down the line.
That's at least consistent as far as it goes, but it leads to strange scenarios. The Gemara seems to want to say that if such an animal, called a ben Pekuah, has children, those children inherit this status of not needing shechita. I can't figure out how many generations this lasts. And what if the ben Pekuah has a child with a non-ben Pekuah? Even though a)the ben Pekuah is kosher to eat without shechita and b)the non-ben Pekuah is kosher to eat, provided you do shechita, c)the child of the ben Pekuah and non-ben Pekuah is assur.
Why? Artscroll has a conceptually puzzling footnote about the various Rishonic conceptualizations of this Gemara... The child of the Ben Pekuah has to be thought of as having partially severed simanim inherited from its parent, and therefore a kosher shechita can't be done. One Rishonic commentator says it inherited one uncut tube from its non-ben Pekuah parent and one cut tube from its ben Pekuah parent. Another says that both simanim are considered half-cut. Either way, you can't do shechita if the simanim are already partially severed, but... if you inspected the animal, its simanim would be fine! It's all a metaphor taken literally or something. The ben Pekuah is a walking dead animal for some halakhic purposes, so therefore we treat it like it's literally dead.
New perek! Perek dalet is about whether a fetus inside a behema when the mother was shechted is kosher or not. The halakha is that yes, it is, even without separate shechita, because it's considered part of the mother. But that just leads us to some interesting edge cases. Which is... kind of interesting, but not particularly practically relevant.
The Mishna says that if the mother is undergoing a difficult pregnancy and the fetal calf extends a leg out of the mother, and then retracts it, *it* is still kosher. However, if the fetal calf extends its head out of the mother, then that is considered a birth even if it retracts the head. (And therefore since it's been born, it would need its own separate shechita if that's possible if you wanted to eat it.)
The second half of the Mishna says that if you cut into the womb and removed a limb from the fetus (Probably because it's a difficult childbirth and you want to make the delivery easier), it does not count as ever min hachai and is permitted to be eaten once you've shechted the mother, but if you cut into a behema and removed a kidney, it would be ever min hachai and thus the kidney would be prohibited even though it would not render the behema a treifa and the behema would be permitted to be eaten once shechted.
The second part of the mishna effectively crystallizes the unusual status of the fetus- it's a part of the mother in some ways (the mother's shechita counts for it) but not in others.
From the first part of the Mishna, the rest of the daf explores opinions deriving from different ways of reading the *it*. that is still kosher. Is *it* referring to the fetus in toto, or is it referring to the limb that was extended, or is referring to the fetus in toto except for the limb?
Rabbi Yehuda teaches in the name of Rav (and later in the name of both Rav and Shmuel) that the halakha is that the limb itself once extended is not kosher, but if it unextends before shechita, then the rest of the fetus is kosher. It derives this from a surprising reading of the verse about the treifos. Shemos 22:30. ובשר בשדה טרפה לא תאכלו. What does בשדה add to the verse? Apparently this encodes a broader concept of the natural space in which a particular kind of meat is supposed to be in order to hold a certain status. For example, if a sacrificial animal is in the Temple courtyard and then is removed from the courtyard, it permanently takes on the status of being prohibited.
According to Rav in this case, the natural שדה of the fetus is inside the womb for it to maintain the status of being connected to the mother, so when it exits the womb it permanently loses this status. Thus a limb that leaves the womb and then returns maintains its status of having exited the womb and is thus forbidden to eat.
This is not the most natural reading of the Mishna, and the Gemara tries a variety of ways to refute it, but it does not. Ulla in the name of Rabbi Yochanan argues that Shemos 22:30 should be limited to just the case of chatas offerings, since there is an explicit pasuk in Vayikra where the idea of permanent ban on chatas removed from the Temple courtyard comes from, but the Gemara refutes this since there is also a pasuk in Devarim from which the Gemara derives midrashically that bikurim are not subject to this ban, and therefore the pasuk in Shemos is needed to demonstrate that fetuses leaving their womb are subject to this prohibition.
When Rabbi Yochanan enters the dispute, this becomes a disagreement between him as the leader in early Amoraic Eretz Yisrael, against Rav and Shmuel as the leaders in early Amoraic Babylon. Even after Rabbi Yochanan's imputed position is conclusively refuted, the Gemara still seems to think there was a disagreement between the two areas about something, so it suggests instead that Rav held that the limb exiting the womb counted in some manner as 'birth' and therefore the whole limb was invalidated if a majority left the womb, whereas Rabbi Yochanan held that the limb exiting was not birth, and only the part of the limb that left the womb is invalidated.
Daf 69
I think it is pretty logical that the fetus would be kosher to eat and not require an additional shechita if found inside a properly shechted mother, but... what if the fetus was fairly well developed and viable, and after you remove it from the mother you raise it... Does it need shechita if you want to eat it? No, its mother's shechita counts for it even years down the line.
That's at least consistent as far as it goes, but it leads to strange scenarios. The Gemara seems to want to say that if such an animal, called a ben Pekuah, has children, those children inherit this status of not needing shechita. I can't figure out how many generations this lasts. And what if the ben Pekuah has a child with a non-ben Pekuah? Even though a)the ben Pekuah is kosher to eat without shechita and b)the non-ben Pekuah is kosher to eat, provided you do shechita, c)the child of the ben Pekuah and non-ben Pekuah is assur.
Why? Artscroll has a conceptually puzzling footnote about the various Rishonic conceptualizations of this Gemara... The child of the Ben Pekuah has to be thought of as having partially severed simanim inherited from its parent, and therefore a kosher shechita can't be done. One Rishonic commentator says it inherited one uncut tube from its non-ben Pekuah parent and one cut tube from its ben Pekuah parent. Another says that both simanim are considered half-cut. Either way, you can't do shechita if the simanim are already partially severed, but... if you inspected the animal, its simanim would be fine! It's all a metaphor taken literally or something. The ben Pekuah is a walking dead animal for some halakhic purposes, so therefore we treat it like it's literally dead.