daf bit: Chullin 32

[cellio]

Today's daf discusses ritual slaughter gone wrong. The laws of kosher slaughter are very specific; the animal must be killed in a single cut across the throat, releasing blood quickly. (This is commonly held to be more humane than many modern methods of slaughter, by the way. This urban-dweller can't comment one way or the other.) If the one doing the slaughter cuts somewhere else first or pauses during the cut, the mishna on today's daf tells us, the meat is not kosher. Specifically it is in the class "neveilah", as oppsed to "terefah" ("treif"), but R. Akiva says it is terefah. R. Yeshabab then gave the following rule, which R. Akiva ultimately agreed with: if an animal is rendered invalid by a fault in the slaughter it is neveilah; if it is rendered invalid by some other defect it is terefah. (32a)

I understand from Judaism.SE that the difference is: a neveilah is ritually impure (which means if you touch it you are too), while a terefah isn't. You can derive benefit (for example, selling the meat to a non-Jew) either way.

But wait, you may be asking: what of the torah's instruction that an animal torn apart by beasts is terefah, which would seem to qualify as a fault in how it was killed? (This is the word that is used.) Google tells me that the Rambam has an answer to that: since that is not the rabbinic understanding of terefah, this torah passage must mean that the animal is attacked but left alive -- terefah literally means torn. So not roadkill but an injury, and you are not allowed to kill and eat that animal.

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Hm, or perhaps "slaughter" doesn't generalize to "killed", only to "deliberately killed"? I seem to recall you mentioning earlier that animals which die of old age or of (eg) falling off cliffs are also not kosher, but not which category they're in.

[(Anonymous)]

The idea is, my cow was just attacked by a wild animal and is bleeding to death here. But wait! I go grab a knife and give it proper kosher slaughter! Treifa.