Masechet Chullin Daf 97/98
Mar. 7th, 2019 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 97
The Mishna introduces a different major concept involving minimum quantities. Obviously, if you eat a forbidden food, it's a violation. But what if you eat a soup that has had a small amount of forbidden food in it? In general, what is the smallest amount of forbidden food that contaminates a larger volume of permitted food?
The answer varies somewhat depending on the type of contact. The main general theory is that if a food carries the taste transferred from a forbidden food, it is forbidden, but if it dos not carry the taste, it's still permitted. Only certain types of contact transfer taste- heat or pungent liquid are usually required to transfer taste, and some foods are considered to have a protective barrier that prevents transfer even in this scenario. And only certain quantities of forbidden food transfer sufficient taste to be detectable- if there is too small an amount of forbidden food to transfer taste, it does not render the permitted food forbidden.
Paradoxically, the discussion comes here in the perek about gid hanasheh seemingly because the main gid hanasheh itself is considered to not have any taste at all, so it allows the Gemara to explore the edge parameters of the principle of transferring taste- what do you do in cases where 'taste' cannot possibly actually mean taste?
There's a basic practical problem with the whole concept. If there is a taste, then it's forbidden to eat. But how can you know without tasting it, and tasting it is safek issur!
So one idea is you can ask a goy to taste it and tell you if it has the taste of the nonkosher food, but the Gemara is reluctant to trust a goy to be sufficiently diligent about halakhic matters, and also what if a goy isn't around? Also, what if both the forbidden meat and the permitted meat taste the same... say, meat from a neveilah mixed in with meat from a kosher shechita? Or what if the meat doesn't have a taste, like gid hanasheh?
The Mishna proposes you do science. You take a big piece of meat and a small piece of turnip or onion, so that the big piece of meat is the size of your permitted meat and the small piece of turnip is the size of your forbidden meat, and you cook them together in a pot of water. If the turnip flavor is detectable, then you can assume that your food is assur. If the turnip flavor is not detectable, your food is muttar.
The Gemara accepts this as is, but recognizes that it won't work or be convenient in every situation. So a somewhat stricter but more universally applicable principle is laid out, called batel b'shishim- nullification by sixty. If there is more than a 60:1 ratio of permitted meat to nonpermitted meat, the unkosher food is nullified by the kosher and it's permitted. Primarily, it seems, because you can be sure that no matter the food, the taste is gone. But this principle works even in cases where taste isn't a detectable thing, so it becomes abstracted a little whether taste transfer matters.
Daf 98
The idea of batel b'shishim is either halacha l'moshe misinai or it's a d'rabbanan rule, but anyway the Gemara tries to find Torah support for it, which is understood to be an asmachta. They find it in the case of a nazir's shelamim offering, where one of the forelegs is dedicated to the kohen but the rest of the animal is permitted to the nazir even if they're not a kohen. So how can they be cooked together if the foreleg is forbidden and would transfer taste to the rest of the animal? The answer is that the foreleg's meat and bones are 1/60th the total volume of the animal, so the permitted nullifies the forbidden. Sort of. You could easily conclude that this is just another weird halakha of nazir and you can't learn a general principle of transfer of taste from it, but it's just as asmachta, so it's okay.
The Mishna introduces a different major concept involving minimum quantities. Obviously, if you eat a forbidden food, it's a violation. But what if you eat a soup that has had a small amount of forbidden food in it? In general, what is the smallest amount of forbidden food that contaminates a larger volume of permitted food?
The answer varies somewhat depending on the type of contact. The main general theory is that if a food carries the taste transferred from a forbidden food, it is forbidden, but if it dos not carry the taste, it's still permitted. Only certain types of contact transfer taste- heat or pungent liquid are usually required to transfer taste, and some foods are considered to have a protective barrier that prevents transfer even in this scenario. And only certain quantities of forbidden food transfer sufficient taste to be detectable- if there is too small an amount of forbidden food to transfer taste, it does not render the permitted food forbidden.
Paradoxically, the discussion comes here in the perek about gid hanasheh seemingly because the main gid hanasheh itself is considered to not have any taste at all, so it allows the Gemara to explore the edge parameters of the principle of transferring taste- what do you do in cases where 'taste' cannot possibly actually mean taste?
There's a basic practical problem with the whole concept. If there is a taste, then it's forbidden to eat. But how can you know without tasting it, and tasting it is safek issur!
So one idea is you can ask a goy to taste it and tell you if it has the taste of the nonkosher food, but the Gemara is reluctant to trust a goy to be sufficiently diligent about halakhic matters, and also what if a goy isn't around? Also, what if both the forbidden meat and the permitted meat taste the same... say, meat from a neveilah mixed in with meat from a kosher shechita? Or what if the meat doesn't have a taste, like gid hanasheh?
The Mishna proposes you do science. You take a big piece of meat and a small piece of turnip or onion, so that the big piece of meat is the size of your permitted meat and the small piece of turnip is the size of your forbidden meat, and you cook them together in a pot of water. If the turnip flavor is detectable, then you can assume that your food is assur. If the turnip flavor is not detectable, your food is muttar.
The Gemara accepts this as is, but recognizes that it won't work or be convenient in every situation. So a somewhat stricter but more universally applicable principle is laid out, called batel b'shishim- nullification by sixty. If there is more than a 60:1 ratio of permitted meat to nonpermitted meat, the unkosher food is nullified by the kosher and it's permitted. Primarily, it seems, because you can be sure that no matter the food, the taste is gone. But this principle works even in cases where taste isn't a detectable thing, so it becomes abstracted a little whether taste transfer matters.
Daf 98
The idea of batel b'shishim is either halacha l'moshe misinai or it's a d'rabbanan rule, but anyway the Gemara tries to find Torah support for it, which is understood to be an asmachta. They find it in the case of a nazir's shelamim offering, where one of the forelegs is dedicated to the kohen but the rest of the animal is permitted to the nazir even if they're not a kohen. So how can they be cooked together if the foreleg is forbidden and would transfer taste to the rest of the animal? The answer is that the foreleg's meat and bones are 1/60th the total volume of the animal, so the permitted nullifies the forbidden. Sort of. You could easily conclude that this is just another weird halakha of nazir and you can't learn a general principle of transfer of taste from it, but it's just as asmachta, so it's okay.
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Date: 2019-03-07 01:08 pm (UTC):-D
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Date: 2019-03-07 02:18 pm (UTC)