005a - הכל שוחטין, פרק ראשון, חולין דף ה ע"א

He did not hold himself apart from him.^[1]

לא הוה מפליג נפשיה מיניה - Yehoshafat took no care to keep himself away and apart from him on account of suspicion at all. This shows that although he was an idolater, he was not a mumar with respect to the whole Torah.^[2]

From where do we know this?

If you say it is from what is written, As I am, so are you; as my people, so are your people —^[3]

כעמי כעמך - the sense being: you are like us, and one may rely on them.

But if so, as my horses, so are your horses — would that too be meant the same way?^[4]

כסוסי כסוסיך ה"נ - would you say that this too was said with regard to what is forbidden and permitted? Rather, you must say it was said with regard to the war.

Rather, what is spent on your horses shall be spent on my horses.

So too here: whatever falls upon you and upon your people shall fall upon me and upon my people.^[5]

Rather, it is from here:

And the king of Israel and Yehoshafat king of Yehudah were sitting each on his throne, robed in their garments, at the threshing floor, at the entrance of the gate of Shomron.^[6]

בגורן - like a threshing floor: they sat in affection, in companionship, and in a single circle, like the Sanhedrin, who do not suspect one another.^[7]

What is meant by at the threshing floor?

If you say an actual threshing floor — was the gate of Shomron a threshing floor?

Rather, it means arranged like a threshing floor.

As we learned: the Sanhedrin sat as half a round threshing floor, so that they should see one another.^[8]

שיהו רואין זה את זה - so that each should hear his fellow, and they should debate with one another until the ruling comes out as halachah. For had they sat in a straight row, those at the head of the row would not see those at its end. And they did not sit in a complete circle, so that there should be room to go out and come in.

Shall we say the following supports him:^[9]

מסייע ליה - to Rav Anan.

And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening.^[10]

And Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: from Achav's slaughterhouse.^[11]

Where it is by the word of Hashem it is different.^[12]

על פי הדבור שאני - for the Holy One, blessed be He, permitted it to him for that hour, as it is written: and I have commanded the ravens to sustain you there.

What is meant by ravens?^[13]

Ravina said: actual ravens.

Rav Adda bar Minyumi said to him: but perhaps they were two men whose names were Orev?^[14]

Is it not written: and they killed Orev at the rock of Orev, and Ze'ev, and so forth?^[15]

He said to him: did it just so happen that both of them were named Orev?!

ואתרמי מילתא כו' - this is said in astonishment.

And perhaps they were named after their place?^[16]

ודלמא על שם מקומן - that they were from the rock of Orev.

Is it not written:

מי לא כתיב - that a man is called by the name of his place, and even an individual, and even though the verse is not speaking of all the people of that place — such as Pelishtim, Givonim — but of one man alone, as it is written: a young girl.^[17]

And Aram went out in raiding bands, and they took captive from the land of Israel a young girl.^[18]

And it is difficult for us: it calls her na'arah and it calls her ketanah?^[19]

וקשיא לן קרי לה נערה - that she had brought forth two hairs, and yet it calls her ketanah, which implies that she had not brought forth two hairs.

And Rabbi Pedas said: ketanah means from Na'uran.^[20]

וא"ר פדת - this na'arah is not a young woman in the literal sense, but is so called after her place, Na'uran. And here too, although it is not speaking of all the people of the place — for certainly he did not reveal himself to all of them, since he was in hiding — even so it may be said that there were two men, and Scripture calls them by their place and does not mention their names.

If so, it should have said Orevim — men of Orev!^[21]

עורביים מבעי ליה - so that one should not come to err and take it as actual ravens.

Shall we say the following supports him:^[22]

All may slaughter, even a Kusi, even an arel, even a Jewish mumar.^[23]

This arel — in what case is it?

If you say it is one whose brothers died on account of milah —^[24]

that man is a perfectly valid Jew!

ישראל מעליא הוא - for he is under compulsion.

Rather it is obvious that it means a mumar with regard to milah.^[25]

Now say the latter clause: even a Jewish mumar.

In what case is it?

If a mumar with regard to one matter —^[26]

אי נימא מומר לדבר אחד - to one of all the mitzvos, to teach us that he is not a mumar with respect to the whole Torah.

that is the same as a mumar with regard to milah!

Rather, is it not a mumar with regard to idolatry, and in accordance with Rav Anan?^[27]

No. I can always say to you: a mumar with regard to idolatry — no.^[28]

For the Master said: idolatry is severe, for whoever denies it is as one who affirms the whole Torah.

שכל הכופר בה כמודה בכל התורה - as it is written: and when you err and do not perform all these mitzvos, and so forth, and we derive in Horayos (8a) that it speaks of idolatry.^[29]

Rather, a mumar with regard to that very thing.^[30]

מומר לאותו דבר - with regard to shechitah, and out of appetite. And it was necessary to teach us this, so that you should not say that since he is habituated to it, it is like something permitted to him; rather it is certainly like something forbidden to him, and it is out of appetite that he transgresses it, so that when we make a knife available to him he does not leave what is permitted and eat what is forbidden.

And in accordance with Rava.^[31]

They raised an objection: from among you — but not all of you.^[32]

מכם - a man, when he brings from among you an offering. And it is written with regard to a vow or a freewill offering, since when he brings implies whenever they wish to bring.

— to exclude the mumar.

להוציא המומר - that we do not accept his freewill offering.

From among you — among you I have made a distinction, and not among the nations.^[33]

מכם בכם חילקתי - that is to say, since this limiting word is written with regard to Israel and not with regard to the nations. For it is written: any man of the house of Israel who brings his offering for all their vows, and so forth, in the portion of blemishes, and it is taught further on in our perek (13b): what does ish ish come to include? To include the idolaters, that they vow vows and freewill offerings like Israel. And with regard to them no limiting word is written, for let it have written from man, when he brings an offering, which would imply and not every man. Learn from this: among you I have made a distinction, that the fit bring and the mumarim do not; and not among the nations, for all of them who bring a freewill offering — we accept from them.^[34]

From the animal —^[35]

מן - for it is written with regard to the animal — to exclude one that mounted or was mounted. So it is expounded in Bava Kama (40b), in Bechoros (41a) and in Temurah (28a).

to include men who resemble an animal.^[36]

עם הדומה לבהמה - who do not keep the mitzvos.

From here they said: offerings are accepted from the wayward of Israel — so that they should return in teshuvah.^[37]

מפושעי ישראל - this implies deliberate transgressors, as it is taught in maseches Yoma (36b): pesha'im — these are the rebellious ones. And so it says: the king of Moav rebelled against me — and that is the mumar. And further on it explains it as it goes.^[38]

except for the mumar, and one who pours a libation of wine,

ומנסך את היין - for idolatry.

and one who desecrates Shabbos in public.^[39]

This itself is difficult.^[40]

You said: from among you — but not all of you, to exclude the mumar. And then it teaches: offerings are accepted from the wayward of Israel?

That is not difficult: the first clause is a mumar with respect to the whole Torah, the middle clause a mumar with regard to one matter.^[41]

Now say the last clause: except for the mumar, and one who pours a libation of wine, and one who desecrates Shabbos in public.

This mumar — in what case is it?^[42]

If a mumar with respect to the whole Torah — that is the first clause!

And if a mumar with regard to one matter — the middle clause is difficult!

אי מומר לדבר אחד קשיא מציעתא - which teaches that we accept — against the last clause.

Rather, is this not what it says: except for the mumar to pour a libation of wine and to desecrate Shabbos in public.^[43]

אלא לאו ה"ק - offerings are accepted from the wayward of Israel in the case of a mumar with regard to one matter, except for the mumar to pour a libation of wine and to desecrate Shabbos, for these are severe. This shows that a mumar with regard to idolatry is like a mumar with respect to the whole Torah. This Tanna holds Shabbos to be as severe as idolatry: for one who serves idolatry denies the Holy One, blessed be He, and one who desecrates Shabbos denies His works and testifies falsely that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not rest at the work of creation.

This shows that a mumar with regard to idolatry is a mumar with respect to the whole Torah.^[44]

And the refutation of Rav Anan is indeed a refutation.^[45]

But is this derived from here — it is derived from there!^[46]

והא מהכא נפקא מהתם נפקא - that offerings are not accepted from the mumarim.

Tosafos

על פי הדבור שאני - And if you should ask: according to what we first supposed, that it was not by the word of Hashem, there is a difficulty, for Rav said that meat which has been out of sight is forbidden, further on (95a). And one may answer that Eliyahu knew, relying on the word of Hashem, that they were not bringing it from an idolater; but it did not enter our minds that the word of Hashem came to permit the prohibition of the shechitah of Achav's slaughterers.^[47]

קרי לה נערה וקרי לה קטנה - In the last perek of Sotah (46b) it is expounded: ne'arim — that they were shaken free of the mitzvos. And here that manner of exposition does not apply.^[48]

דמן נעורן - It is the name of a place, as it is written: and to the east Na'aran, and to the west Gezer.^[49]

עורביים מבעי ליה - And even though it is written Ivrim, Mitzrim, and it is not written Ivriyim, Mitzriyim — there, there is no room to err.^[50]

מכם ולא כולכם להוציא את המומר - It is astonishing, for it is needed for what we expound at the beginning of Lulav HaGazul (Sukkah 30a): if before despair — a man, when he brings from among you, said the Merciful One, and this is not his. And one may answer that there it is not because we derive a stolen article before despair from this verse, for that is derived from his house, as we say in Merubeh (Bava Kama 67b): his offering — and not the stolen one. When? If you say before despair, why is a verse needed — that is to say, can he consecrate it at all? His house, said the Merciful One. And it does not bring there the verse of when he brings, but only to say: an offering, said the Merciful One, and this is not an offering, since it is not in his power to consecrate it before despair. And one may further answer that two things are learned from from among you, and it is needed for a stolen article that has been consecrated; and from his house it is not derived, only that it does not count toward his obligation.^[51]

כדי שיחזרו בהם בתשובה - It is not the reason of the verse that he is expounding, but he is giving a reason for the matter: since we include from this a mumar with regard to one matter more than a mumar with respect to the whole Torah, and we do not establish the verse as speaking of something else. And he says that a mumar with regard to one matter will return in teshuvah readily, and therefore we accept from them, so that they should return.^[52]

Notes

1. 1. The daf opens in the middle of a sugya begun on 4b. Rav Anan has held that one who is a mumar for idolatry is not thereby a mumar for the whole Torah, and the Gemara now tests that from the conduct of two kings who ruled at the same time on opposite sides of the divided kingdom. Achav ruled the northern kingdom of Israel (c. 874–853 BCE), son of Omri. He married Izevel of Tzidon and built a temple to Baal in Shomron; Scripture says he provoked Hashem more than all the kings of Israel before him [מלכים א טז, ל-לג]. Yehoshafat ruled Yehudah in the south (c. 870–849 BCE), son of Asa, and is praised for walking in his father's way without turning aside. Yet he bound himself to Achav by marriage — his son Yehoram married Achav's daughter Asalyah — and joined him in the campaign to retake Ramos Gilad, which is where the verses quoted here belong. The pairing is the whole point: a king Scripture praises sat openly with a king Scripture condemns as an idolater, and did not hold himself apart. Had Achav been a mumar for the whole Torah, Yehoshafat would have kept his distance.
2. 2. The concern would have been chashad — being suspected through association. Rashi's closing phrase sets up the distinction on which the whole daf turns: a mumar for one matter against a mumar for the entire Torah. The first remains a Jew for most halachic purposes, including shechitah, as the Mishnah at the head of the masechta rules [חולין ב, א].
3. 3. Yehoshafat's reply when Achav asks him to join the war at Ramos Gilad. Read as a statement of shared standing, it would show him placing himself and his people on a level with Achav and his people [מלכים א כב, ד].
4. 4. The refutation. The same verse continues as my horses, so are your horses, and horses have no standing in matters of permitted and forbidden. The phrase therefore cannot be about halachic reliance.
5. 5. Having fixed the horses clause as a commitment to the campaign, the Gemara re-reads the earlier clause to match: as my people, so are your people means shared cost and shared risk in the war, not shared religious standing. The proof from this verse falls away.
6. 6. The scene at the gate of Shomron before the two kings set out, where they sit in state to hear the four hundred prophets and then Michayhu ben Yimlah. The proof now rests not on what Yehoshafat said, which proved ambiguous, but on how the two were seen to sit [מלכים א כב, י].
7. 7. Rashi takes at the threshing floor not as a place but as a manner of sitting — the open half-circle in which the Sanhedrin sat. Men who suspect one another do not sit that way, and that is the whole proof.
8. 8. The Mishnah in Sanhedrin describing how the court of seventy-one was seated: a half-round, so that every member had every other in view (Sanhedrin 36b). It is cited here to fix the meaning of the word in the verse.
9. 9. A fresh attempt at support for Rav Anan, from a different direction: not from how Achav was treated by a king, but from food that came out of Achav's own kitchen.
10. 10. Eliyahu, hiding at Nachal Kerith during the drought he had decreed in Achav's reign, is fed twice daily by ravens [מלכים א יז, ו].
11. 11. Rav's tradition on where the meat came from, and what makes the verse a proof: Eliyahu ate meat slaughtered by the butchers of an idolatrous king. That would be permitted only if such a man's shechitah is valid — that is, only if a mumar for idolatry is not a mumar for the whole Torah.
12. 12. The proof is dismissed. Where a navi acts on explicit divine instruction nothing halachic can be derived, since a temporary directive can set aside an ordinary prohibition. Rashi supplies the verse two earlier in which Hashem tells Eliyahu He has commanded the ravens to sustain him there [מלכים א יז, ד].
13. 13. With the halachic proof set aside, the Gemara turns to the plain sense of the narrative. The Hebrew orvim can be read as the birds or as a proper name, and the discussion that follows to the end of the sugya is about which it is.
14. 14. If they were men rather than birds, the question of whose meat Eliyahu ate returns, since men could have brought it from Achav's kitchen.
15. 15. Orev and Ze'ev were the two Midianite officers captured and killed by the men of Efraim after Gidon's rout of Midian; each was put to death at a place afterwards named for him. The verse proves that Orev is used in Scripture as a man's name [שופטים ז, כה].
16. 16. Rav Adda bar Minyumi does not give up the reading. Granted it is unlikely that two men happened to share the name; but they may have been called orvim after the place, the rock of Orev named in that same verse, rather than by a personal name at all.
17. 17. Rashi supplies the argument the bare words assume: Scripture does call a single person by a collective or place name. His examples are gentilic plurals used of individuals, and the case he builds on is the captive girl in the next verse.
18. 18. The Israelite girl taken captive in an Aramean raid who served Naaman's wife and told her of the navi in Shomron who could cure his tzaraas [מלכים ב ה, ב].
19. 19. The two words are halachic opposites. A ketanah is a girl before she brings forth two hairs; a na'arah is the stage that begins once she has. One verse cannot call her both, which is what makes the phrase available for a different reading.
20. 20. Rabbi Pedas resolves it by taking one of the two words as a place name rather than an age: she was a na'arah in years and ketanah in the sense of coming from Na'uran. That establishes the principle Rav Adda needs — an individual called by a place — and so the ravens may be two men of Orev.
21. 21. The final objection, on the form of the word. Had Scripture meant men of Orev it would have used the gentilic form, which is distinct from the plural of the bird. Using the bird's own plural would mislead, so the word must mean actual ravens — and the proof from Eliyahu's meat is gone.
22. 22. A second attempt at support for Rav Anan, now from a Mishnah rather than from Scripture.
23. 23. The opening Mishnah of the masechta, which rules that anyone may perform shechitah and then names three marginal cases to make the point. A Kusi is one of the people settled in Shomron after the exile of the ten tribes, whose standing as converts was disputed; an arel is an uncircumcised Jew. The Gemara now presses each of the three [חולין ב, א].
24. 24. Where two brothers have died following milah, a third is not circumcised, since the family is presumed to carry a danger. Such a man is uncircumcised by compulsion rather than by choice, so listing him teaches nothing — nobody would have thought his shechitah invalid.
25. 25. So the arel of the Mishnah is one who refuses milah deliberately — a mumar with regard to a single mitzvah. That is a real teaching: his shechitah is valid.
26. 26. The argument turns on redundancy. If the Mishnah's closing case is also a mumar for one matter, it teaches exactly what the arel clause has just taught, and a Mishnah does not say the same thing twice.
27. 27. Which leaves idolatry as the only reading that adds anything — and a Mishnah permitting the shechitah of a mumar for idolatry is precisely Rav Anan's position.
28. 28. The support is refused. The doubled no is terse even for the Gemara: the second answers the question — a mumar for idolatry may not perform shechitah — and the reason follows.
29. 29. Idolatry is weighed against the whole Torah, so abandoning it is not abandoning one mitzvah among many. Rashi's proof is the verse [במדבר טו, כב], which speaks of erring in all these mitzvos in the singular, and the derivation in [הוריות ח, א] that the passage is about idolatry.
30. 30. The Mishnah's third case is resolved differently: a mumar with regard to shechitah itself — one who habitually eats neveilah. Rashi's point is that he does so out of appetite rather than defiance, so when a valid knife is put in his hand he will use it; the forbidden still registers as forbidden to him.
31. 31. Rava's principle, brought on 4b: one who transgresses out of appetite is not thereby suspected of transgressing where he gains nothing by it.
32. 32. A beraisa is now raised against the whole position. It expounds the opening verse of Vayikra on voluntary offerings, reading the apparently superfluous from among you as a limitation [ויקרא א, ב].
33. 33. A second derivation from the same two words: the limitation operates within Israel, marking off those from whom an offering is accepted from those from whom it is not. It does not operate against the nations, from whom a freewill offering is accepted without distinction.
34. 34. Rashi shows how the second derivation works, by contrast. The parallel verse on vows and freewill offerings [ויקרא כב, יח] uses the doubled ish ish, expounded later in this perek [חולין יג, ב] as including the nations — and carries no limiting word against them. The limitation appears only where Israel is addressed, so it is within Israel that the distinction is drawn.
35. 35. The beraisa moves to the next words of the verse. Rashi notes that the partitive min does its own separate work — excluding an animal used for bestiality, whether actively or passively — and that this is how the word is expounded in [בבא קמא מ, ב], [בכורות מא, א] and [תמורה כח, א].
36. 36. Where from among you excluded, from the animal includes: men who resemble an animal in that they do not keep the mitzvos. The two halves of the verse are read as pulling in opposite directions, which is what produces the contradiction the Gemara is about to raise.
37. 37. The practical ruling the beraisa draws out, and the reason for it: the offering is accepted not because the man's standing is overlooked but because accepting it is the road back. The clause so that they should return in teshuvah is the one Tosfos takes up at the foot of the page.
38. 38. Rashi fixes the sense of poshei Yisrael, which is not a general word for wrongdoers. He brings the beraisa in Yoma on the three terms of the Yom Kippur confession, where pesha'im are the rebellious as against errors and deliberate sins (Yoma 36b), and the usage in Melachim where the king of Moav rebelled against Israel. On that reading poshei Yisrael means the same as the beraisa's mumar, which is exactly why the beraisa now appears to contradict itself.
39. 39. Three exclusions, and the reading of this list is the hinge of the whole passage: whether it names three separate people or one person described three ways. The Gemara will settle on the second.
40. 40. Before answering the objection raised against Rava, the Gemara turns on the beraisa itself: it excludes the mumar in its opening clause and then accepts from the wayward of Israel in its middle clause, and by Rashi's gloss those are the same man.
41. 41. The internal contradiction is resolved by the distinction the daf has been building: the opening clause excludes a mumar for the whole Torah, the middle clause accepts from a mumar for one matter.
42. 42. But the resolution creates a new problem at the last clause, and it is a genuine squeeze: read one way the last clause repeats the first, read the other way it contradicts the middle. Neither option survives, which forces the re-reading that follows.
43. 43. The list is re-read as one clause rather than three. It does not exclude a mumar, and a libation-pourer, and a Shabbos-desecrator; it excludes the mumar who pours libations or desecrates Shabbos. Rashi adds why these two and no others: idolatry denies the Creator, and public desecration of Shabbos denies His work of creation, so this Tanna weighs them alike.
44. 44. The consequence. A mumar for idolatry falls under the exclusion together with a mumar for the whole Torah, so the two are treated alike — the opposite of what Rav Anan held.
45. 45. The formal conclusion. Teyuvta doubled is the Gemara's strongest form of rejection: the position is not merely questioned but overturned, and Rav Anan's ruling does not stand.
46. 46. With that settled, a new question opens on the beraisa's own derivation: why is the exclusion of the mumar's offering derived from this verse when it is already derived elsewhere. The answer runs on to 5b, so the daf ends mid-question.
47. 47. Tosfos presses the stage of the sugya before the answer al pi ha'dibbur. Rav holds that meat left unwatched is forbidden, since it may have been exchanged [חולין צה, א] — and meat carried by birds is unwatched by definition. Tosfos answers by splitting what the divine word did: it assured Eliyahu of the meat's provenance, which is a matter of knowledge, but was never understood to permit meat that was actually forbidden.
48. 48. Elsewhere the root behind na'ar is expounded homiletically as being shaken free of the mitzvos [סוטה מו, ב]. Tosfos notes that the reading cannot be imported here, where the word describes a captive girl and nothing in the verse invites it.
49. 49. Tosfos supplies the evidence that Na'uran is a real place and not an invention of the answer: it appears among the holdings of Efraim, paired with Gezer [דברי הימים א ז, כח].
50. 50. Tosfos tests the Gemara's final objection. Scripture does use short gentilic plurals — Ivrim, Mitzrim — rather than the fuller form, so the argument from form is not absolute. The answer is that those words name no animal, so no reader could be misled; orvim is different because the bird is there to be mistaken for.
51. 51. Tosfos asks how the words can be spare enough to exclude the mumar when they are already needed elsewhere: in Sukkah they serve to disqualify a stolen lulav before the owner has despaired of recovering it [סוכה ל, א]. Yei'ush, despair, is the point at which an owner gives up hope of recovery, and it changes what a thief can do with what he holds. Two answers: that the Sukkah passage in fact rests on a different verse, as Bava Kama shows [בבא קמא סז, ב]; or that both derivations stand together, each doing work the other cannot.
52. 52. Tosfos is careful about what kind of statement the closing clause is. It is not a reason read out of the verse, which would make the acceptance conditional on the man actually returning; it is an explanation of why the halachah should fall this way rather than another. A mumar for one matter is within reach of teshuvah in a way that one who has abandoned everything is not, and the offering is accepted to keep that road open.