What Fish and Birds are Made of, Ezekiel's Clean Diet, and other stories from b.Hullin 26-44

In which Rava takes up archery

This week I started working at my job as Interim Director of Jewish Life at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Life, which is a fancy corporate way to say I am filling in for the rabbi, who is on leave. SFCJL is a fantastic organization, with a steadfast commitment to community, compassion, and excellence in all it does, and I’m getting to know our fabulous residents and hold services and events at the synagogue and elsewhere. I’m teaching a series about animals in spiritual traditions (we started with donkeys!). I’m also still happily working at Congregation Shir Ami, where I’ve started teaching an adult education series about the psychological doozy that is the story of Joseph and his brothers in Gen. 42-45. And I have some big writing plans for the summer, both on criminal justice and on Jewish studies! This means, alas, some sluggishness in delivering the daf to you, but we’re catching up today with the help of Ein Yaakov with stories from chapter 2 of Hullin.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that we’re not going through chapter 2 blow by blow, because a lot of it goes in depth into the technicalities of kosher slaughter for each kind of animal, and the details are, let’s just say, unappetizing for this meat avoider. I, for one, wish there were a Talmud tractate about making vegetable stocks and ratatouille, and would have loved the recipe for those non-tithed greens that Rabbi Meir ate a few pages ago. In the absence of plant-based tractates, here is an assortment of the best stories from Kol Ha-Shohet:

What are fish and birds made of? (b.Hullin 27b)

We start off with an anonymous passer-by from the Galilee (עוֹבֵר גְּלִילָאָה) who says that, despite the fact that a kosher slaughter of land animals requires cutting through two simanim (the gullet and the windpipe), slaughtering fish does not require anything (unusually spelled as bivlo klum, הֶכְשֵׁירָן בִּוְלֹא כְּלוּם). It’s not a bad thing this guy is left nameless, because he’s not a zoology expert: he claims the fish were created from water and land animals from earth. Birds are an in-between kind of animal, because they were made of mud (a mix of earth and water). Rav Shmuel Kapotkaa (maybe from a place called Cappadocia in Turkey?) explains this in-between category of birds: they have scales on their feet, like fish, which explains that there was water involved in their creation.

This leads to a citation of an (implied) argument between Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai and a Roman official. You’ll recall that Roman legionnaires and politicians loved nothing more than to sit with tanna’im and shoot the breeze about Jewish scripture (which reminds me a bit of how TikTok is these days). Anyway, the Roman official thought the birds were made of water because they were made on the day the fish were (Gen. 1:20). Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, however, argued the birds were made of earth, because they were made along with the land animals and presented to the man to be named (Gen. 2:19). It’s convenient that we have two creation stories! After telling the official that the birds were made of mud (a compromise?), Yoḥanan ben Zakkai noticed that his students were looking at each other (“he’s getting soft!” “maybe I should transfer!”) and told them that the reason he gave a flimsy answer to the Roman is that he secretly agrees with him that the birds were made of water, along with the fish, and were brought to the man to be named along with the land animals.

Rava Takes Up Archery (b.Hullin 30b)

The next story riffs off one of the slaughter rules - that one may not decapitate the animal in one motion. Shmuel creatively deduces this from Jeremiah 9:7: “Their tongue is a sharpened arrow, it speaks deceit (חֵץ שָׁחוּט לְשׁוֹנָם מִרְמָה דִבֵּר).” The word “shahut” (שָׁחוּט), which means “slaughtered,” comes alongside other arrow definitions: in I Kings 10:16, King Solomon is said to have made targets out of “shahut gold” (זָהָב שָׁחוּט), which the Gemara interprets as meaning that the gold was spun like a thread—but in the Jeremiah verse, the word “shahut” probably refers to the drawing of the arrow, rather than to a thread spining motion. Which leads as to an anecdote. Rava was examining an arrow for Rabbi Yona bar Tahlifa (probably, in keeping with the slaughter rules, to ensure its smoothness), and right then a bird flew by. Rava immediately shot the bird off the air. Rather than being concerned about the bird, the Gemara is concerned with the kosher status of the kill. What if the bird was flying at an angle that made the arrow go through the simanim in a reverse order (וְדִילְמָא עָבִיד חֲלָדָה)? Nah, rest assured, says the Gemara: we checked the bird and the feathers at the front of the neck were unruffled, which means the arrow entered from the front of the neck ( חֲזִינַן גִּידְפֵי דְּמִיפַּרְמִי). Bullseye, Rava!

Ezekiel’s Clean Diet (b.Hullin 44b)

In Ezekiel 4:14, the prophet says to God, “Aha, God, here, my soul has not been impure, and I have not eaten a nevelah (נְבֵלָה, an improperly killed animal) or a trefah (טְרֵפָה, a non-kosher animal) from my youth till now, and the flesh of a piggul (פִּגּוּל, a sacrifice that violated the proper time and place rules) has not come into my mouth.” This sounds like one of those sanctimonious “what I eat in a day” videos, and indeed, the gemara goes into each of the categories and takes them apart like TikTok commenters. The nevelah and trefah business, they explain, refer to the meat of “kos kos (כּוֹס כּוֹס)”. This does not refer to couscous (though I wish it did!), nor is it two glasses or two birds of prey.

Rather, apparently it refers to a dying animal that people rush each other to slaughter quickly before it does (slaughter! slaughter!). The piggul business refers to refraining from eating animals that wise man forbade, and according to Rabbi Natan, to refraining from eating animals whose flesh was not properly offered.

Michael the Archangel and the Little Worm (b.Hullin 40b)

This story deals with an apparent contradiction (urminhi!) between two mishnayot. The first states that, if one slaughters for the sake of a mountain, or another natural entity, the slaughter is unfit but it is not regarded as idolatry. The second says: he who slaughters for mountains, hills, rivers, deserts, sun, moon, stars and constellations, Michael the Archangel, or even a little worm (שִׁילְשׁוּל קָטָן), slaughters for idolatry. Abaye explains away the contradiction: the first mishna deals with slaughtering for a natural entity, rather than worshipping it as a living spiritual entity; the second one deals with worshipping these entities for what they represent, rather than for what they are. In other words, the mountain is not an idol; the spirit of the mountain is. This reminds me a lot of the material we covered in b.Avodah Zarah, in which we debated when a pile of stones becomes a shrine to Mercury—but I’m not finding it cross-referenced in Hullin. The whole thing reminded me of this terrific article by my former colleague David Takacs. In the article, he analyzes the practice of granting natural entities valid legal personas (personae?) for the purpose of environmental protection.

These take us into Chapter 3. Have a good week!