Kerisos 3:7-8

Krisos 3:7

Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua went to the market in Emaos to buy an animal for the wedding feat of Rabban Gamliel’s son. While there, Rabbi Akiva asked them the law should one have relations with his sister, his father’s sister and his mother’s sister all in the same period of unawareness, i.e., is one liable to bring one sin offering or a separate sin offering for each offense? They replied that they never learned such a law but they did learn that if one has relations with five menstruant wives all in the same period of unawareness, then he must bring five separate sin offerings. If this is the case with violating the same prohibition multiple times, it must all the more so apply to violating multiple prohibitions.

Krisos 3:8

Rabbi Akiva also asked Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua about a partially-severed limb hanging from an animal’s body. They replied that they also hadn’t learned a law about this per se but they did learn that a partially-severed limb hanging from a human being is ritually clean. Here’s what people afflicted with boils in Jerusalem used to do: on erev Pesach, they would go to the doctor, who would cut the limb but leave it hanging from a thread. He would then stick it on a thorn so that when the person walked away, the limb would detach by itself (rendering neither party ritually impure). In this way, both the patient and the doctor were able to bring their Passover offerings. If a partially-severed human limb is ritually clean, it follows logically that this must certain be true of an animal.