פרשה: ראה · עלייה: רביעי (נצח)

בנים אתם לה׳ אלוקיכם, "You are children to the Lord your G'd, etc." Why did the Torah write this statement next to the prohibition to make incisions on one's body? It appears that the reason is to teach us that if one loses a family member to death one should not look upon the deceased as having become lost. The true state of affairs can be understood by a parable. A father sent a son to a distant city to buy some merchandise. Seeing the son did not return, the father sends out someone after a while to try and locate him. The son's absence was felt only in his home town; this does not mean that he no longer exists. Moreover, the chances are that the reason he did not return is that he is better off in his new home as he is closer to the original father, i.e. G'd, who was the primary source of his having lived on earth in the first place. This is the reason we must not make incisions on our bodies, or to make bald spots on top of our heads in mourning for the deceased. This law would not apply to the Gentile nations as they are not in the category of being "children of G'd." The reason the Torah stresses the word אתם, "you," is to explain the difference between the death of a Gentile who does indeed cease to live in any world upon his physical death and the Jew who moves on to a higher world.

והראה ואת האיה, and the aforementioned birds, etc. It appears that every one of the 24 categories of unclean birds listed here has numerous sub-categories. This is the reason the Torah does not write למינה, "according to its kind," but למינהו, "according to their kind" (Chulin 63). When the bird mentioned is the only one of its kind or there are only a few variants of that category, the Torah speaks of למינו, "its kind." The proof for this theory is that the Torah does not write למינו in connection with the נשר (often translated as eagle), and the Talmud in Chulin 61 when not certain about a particular bird suggests that it may belong to the family of the נשר. Clearly, the sages of the Talmud considered the word נשר as a collective term for quite a variety of birds of its category.

לא תאכלו כל נבלה, "You shall not eat any carcass, etc." The reason that the Torah adds the word כל, "any" or "all kinds of," is justified according to the sages who hold that two types of prohibitions do apply to the same animal simultaneously (compare Chulin 113). [supposing you were to eat the carcass of an animal which even if ritually slaughtered would have been forbidden because it was already forbidden as an unclean animal during its lifetime. According to that view you would be culpable for two sins. Ed.] According to the sages who hold that one is not culpable for an additional prohibition, i.e. for the prohibition of eating the carcass of say a pig, the word כל, "all or every," is needed to forbid the carcass of either domestic animal, free-roaming animal, or birds. However, carcasses of unclean animals would not be included in this prohibition.

An additional meaning of the word כל may be related to what we have learned in Me-ilah 4,3 and which has been confirmed by a ruling of Maimonides in chapter four of his treatise Ma-achalot assurot. He writes: "all carcasses may be combined with one another. How does this work in practice? If someone takes a minute amount of the carcass of an ox plus a minute amount of the carcass of a deer, plus a minute amount of the carcass of a hen, if the three amounts combined are equal to the size of an olive then he who eats this combination is liable to thirty nine lashes." Thus far Maimonides. The statement: "you must not eat any carcass" therefore refers to the minimum quantity which is considered a violation, i.e. even if three separate animals were needed to make up the quantity of the size equal to an olive.

לגר אשר בשעריך, "to the stranger who is in your gates, etc." When the Torah speaks of the stranger it mentions giving it to him, whereas when speaking about the Gentile [who does not even observe the 7 Noachide laws. Ed.] the Torah mentions selling the carcass to him. In Chulin 114 we find a dispute between Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah concerning the meaning of our verse. The former holds that our verse indicates a preference for giving the carcass to the stranger rather than selling it to him although both is permitted; however at the same time the Torah prefers you to sell the carcass to the Gentile rather than to give it to him as a gift. Rabbi Yehudah understands the wording to mean that to the Gentiles the carcass may only be sold, whereas to the stranger it may only be given as a gift. Rabbi Yehudah bases himself on the word או meaning "or." Had the Torah wanted to permit selling the carcass to the stranger it should have written ומכור, "and sell it," instead of או מכור, "or sell it." Rabbi Meir understands the sequence of "giving or selling" as an indication of which method the Torah prefers in each respective situation. In order to understand the approach of Rabbi Yehudah of why the Torah does not state unequivocally that the Gentile may not be given the carcass, etc., we have to refer to Avodah Zarah 67. [The subject under discussion in the Talmud there concerns matters whose substance as well as whose taste is prohibited. The question is whether the taste is prohibited even if it does not only not cause pleasure but has a distinctly negative influence on the palate. Ed.] Rabbi Shimon permits a substance which has become less enjoyable due to the addition of forbidden foreign matter, whereas Rabbi Meir forbids such a substance regardless of whether the taste enhances it or makes it unpalatable. Rabbi Shimon uses our verse to prove that anything which is fit as food for a stranger is called a carcass, i.e. falls under the prohibition that a Jew must not eat it. If it is not fit for a stranger to eat, it no longer rates as a carcass in Jewish law. Thus far the Talmud. From the above we may assume that Rabbi Shimon's exegesis is based on what is given to a stranger. A person would not make a gift of something to someone unless the recipient would enjoy such a gift. Needless to say that something which is unfit to give away is impossible to offer for sale either. From the above the Talmud seems to conclude that the definition of the word "carcass" depends on the suitability of the carcass as either a gift or its having a commercial value. This argument does not appear convincing. It appears to me that the word כל in our verse is meant to tell us that the condition of the carcass is immaterial to the question of whether it is forbidden or not. The mention of selling it or giving it away is totally unrelated to the status of the carcass as a forbidden substance.

If you accept my argument we need to understand Rabbi Shimon differently. He uses the fact that our verse is phrased in an unusual manner to prove his point. The Torah wrote the word "stranger" next to the word carcass," i.e. "every carcass is for the stranger," instead of writing it in the same way as it did later when speaking about selling the carcass to the Gentile. There the Torah uses the normal syntax, writing: "or to sell it to the Gentile." It is this unusual positioning of the respective words נבלה לגר which form the basis of Rabbi Shimon's exegesis. He most certainly did not fail to give due weight to the word כל. Had the Torah written תתננה לגר, "you are to give it to the stranger," Rabbi Shimon would not have had an "exegetical leg" to stand on.

We can now understand the reason of Rabbi Yehudah who holds like Rabbi Shimon in the discussion we quoted about נותן טעם לפגם, "when the taste of the forbidden substance is displeasing." Seeing that he holds that once the carcass is not suitable either commercially or as a gift and is therefore not forbidden to the Jew who owns it, we needed to be told that even if the carcass still has commercial value it may be sold or given away by its owner. According to Rabbi Meir who holds that even a commercially unsaleable carcass is forbidden, the whole subject of the suitability of the carcass did not arise so that the wording of the verse did not have to take this into account.

I have found that in Avodah Zarah 68 the Talmud raises the question of a carcass which is unsuitable either as a gift or as something saleable. Rabbi Meir claims that the word כל includes only carcasses which prior to the animal having died were fit to eat or to give as a gift, whereas animals which were badly diseased before death are not included under the prohibition of the word "carcass" even according to the view of Rabbi Meir! Rabbi Shimon replied that the Torah did not need to write a special word in order for me to know that a diseased animal could not ever become forbidden under the heading of "carcass." According to what we have argued so far, what kind of objection did the Talmud raise against the view of Rabbi Meir? We have already explained that there is no room for Rabbi Meir to use the wording of the verse as Rabbi Shimon does? Perhaps we need to say that the Talmud only elaborates (unnecessarily) when raising this question as if to say: "even assuming that Rabbi Meir could use the exegetical approach of Rabbi Shimon, he would be able to apply the word כל to exclude an animal which had been totally unsuitable as potential food already while it was alive, etc." The fact is however, that there is no real question against Rabbi Meir as we have already mentioned. At any rate, even according to the view of Rabbi Meir that when the taste of the carcass has been negatively affected it is still forbidden, if it had been unfit to eat for reasons of disease and the accompanying stench before its death, it is considered as plain earth and certainly does not fit the definition of "carcass." The two scholars then only disagree as to whether we need a word in the Torah to teach us this latter point.