Week Five: Orach Chaim 21 and Yoreh De’ah 22

In our physical world, everything wears out eventually, including objects we used for mitzvot and other valuable Jewish purposes. Orach Chaim 21 discusses how to dispose of such items, an example of a clear principle, do not be mevazeh a mitzvah, treat it insultingly, without clear source-based guidance on the details. Bringing disagreement.

Leftovers are the Challenge

AH Orach Chaim 21 starts with Megillah 26b, we may discard tashmishei mitzvah, objects used to perform a mitzvah, such as a sukkah, lulav, shofar, or tzitzit, where tashmishei kedushah, items used as adjuncts to writings of Scripture, such as a cover for a sefer Torah or a container for tefillin, must be buried.

AH in se’if 2 thinks the ruling somewhat obvious, because mitzvot have no inherent sanctity (where Torah does). [He doesn’t quite say it, but he seems to mean Torah writing is always significant, even if no longer in use, where mitzvah items’ importance stems only from their active employment. Once a set of tzitzit will no longer be worn, they lose their status.]

She’iltot 126 explains, this halachah tells us we may not use these tashmishei mitzvah for our own needs, the strings of tzitzit as ordinary string, for example. All we can do is throw them out. She’iltot likened it to kisui ha-dam, the obligation to cover the blood of birds and certain animals after killed for food. The one covering the blood may not kick the dirt onto the blood, that is disrespectful to the mitzvah.

What Constitutes Mistreatment

Tur disliked the comparison, because kicking the dirt actively denigrates the mitzvah, where using a string for other purposes does not. AH defends She’iltot, but once we have a debate among reputable authorities, we’re not going to settle it here.

For a third view, se’if three cites Rambam, Laws of Tzitzit 3;9, who allows wearing tzitzit into a bathroom (remember “tzitzit” in earlier sources generally means what we call a tallit; men today do not wear their tallit into the bathroom, and probably would instinctively agree with Tur, it denigrates the mitzvah if we did). Rambam also allows throwing them away if they break, although AH thinks he, too, would not have allowed using them for one’s own purposes.

Se’if four has Beit Yosef’s summary, we may throw them out after they can no longer be used, but while still in use, it degrades the mitzvah to use them for our own purposes.

There’s Neutral and There’s Negative

Rema thinks tossing them out like garbage too extreme, the halachah only meant they need not be put in genizah, the special burial place for worn out Torah writings. Rema praises those who choose to put these kinds of items in genizah, considers it a laudable expression of respect [earlier authorities had sounded like former tashmishei mitzvah have zero significance; Rema is arguing Megillah meant only they have less significance than tashmishei kedushah.]

AH thinks Rema’s opposition to degrading such items is the law, not a stringency, but his preference for genizah was a lone view. He points to the next paragraph in Shulchan Aruch, where R. Yosef Karo himself prohibits using a former tallit (the garment to which the tzitzit were attached; the worn-out strings are items of former mitzvah, but the garment was never itself a mitzvah at all) as toilet paper. AH argues he is making the same point as Rema, even if we need not bury remnants of mitzvah, we can’t treat them derogatorily.

Magen Avraham promoted finding some mitzvah-adjacent use for these items, like turning former tzitzit strings into bookmarks for Torah study.

Sleeping in Tzitzit

Shulchan Aruch’s se’if three accepted Rambam’s permission to wear tzitzit into the bathroom, and to sleep in them, although some objected to the latter (because we are in less control of ourselves when we sleep). Some also opposed giving tzitzit to a non-Jewish cleaner, for fear the non-Jew will not treat them properly.

AH, se’if six, does not see how it can be worse to wear tzitzit to sleep than the bathroom, and suggests it is too much to ask people to take them off every time they relieve themselves (he means tzitzit worn on garments that don’t come off easily, perhaps the reason we do take off our tallitot, especially because the tallit is much more of a ritual garment, worn only during prayer, as Taz said, with AH’s agreement).

While Rema allowed sleeping in tzitzit, Magen Avraham noted the Arizal valued it.

Not On the Floor

The last paragraph of the siman discusses letting the strings of a tallit drag on the floor, where some authorities inferred a deep problem from Yeshayahu 14;23 (others thought the issue was only deliberate stepping on them). While some tucked their tallit’s strings into their belts to avoid dragging, AH doesn’t think we need get too excited about occasional, incidental contact.

As I said at the outset: an agreed-upon issue, bizayon mitzvah, with disputed applications and little source material to produce an unequivocal ruling.

Yoreh De’ah 22: Getting Out All the Blood

Turning to Yoreh De’ah 22, our next siman in my randomized list, we find ourselves in a discussion of how to ensure our killing of a kosher bird gets out as much of its blood as possible. Remember that shechitah requires slicing the majority of two simanim, the esophagus and windpipe (for a bird, slicing only one suffices). AH Se’if 1 relies on Rambam for an idea Chazal commanded, the shochet, the man killing the animal, must also slice or puncture two veins near the simanim, while the bird is still in its death throes, the blood still warm, to help the blood flow out.

We do so because Chazal held this blood will only flow during shechitah; failing that, neither salt nor fire would remove it. Worse, this blood flows all the time during the bird’s life, denying us a leniency we apply to some other kinds of blood (in the organs), blood that hasn’t moved is not prohibited. This blood has definitely moved.

The Whole Animal is the Problem

Should the shochet fail to slice or pierce these veins during shechitah, Rosh held that cutting up the bird along with salting would suffice. In se’if two, AH connects Rosh’s idea to the reason Chazal did not apply the stringency to animals; birds tend to be cooked/roasted whole, so they made a blanket rule. Should someone plan to roast or cook an entire animal, AH thinks the shochet must make sure to slice these veins there as well.

As an aside, he warns us not to think this is a necessary part of proper shechitah, it is only about being sure the needed blood is in fact pulled from the animal [he implies that were we to discover some other way to remove all this blood, we would not be obligated to include this in shechitah]. He also writes, as the Karaites who walk in darkness think, a reference I don’t understand (did Reform Jews of his time think slicing the veins was part of shechitah?).

Since few of us perform shechitah, I’m going to skip the rest of the “slice the veins” discussion. One part of it introduces an idea we need to know in other kashrut contexts, though. When the veins were not sliced, and the animal roasted whole, our siman gives us a first taste of how far we have to worry about spread when prohibited items are cooked with permitted ones.

In this case, we have to throw away the veins themselves (since they contain blood we are not allowed to eat), then cut around the thickness of a finger, called kedei netilah. In other fairly similar circumstances, we allow ourselves kelipah, peeling off one layer, because we suspect the material didn’t exude as much. Here, we worry more.

We might have required sixty times the volume of the veins, as with other prohibited materials cooked with permitted, but Rosh argued that blood doesn’t spread as widely during roasting as during cooking. With other roasting, Yoreh De’ah 105 requires sixty times the prohibited materials, but here, enough authorities (Tosafot and Semag) applied the principle of ke-vol’o kach polto, whatever was absorbed into the animal by roasting would have equally been expelled during that roasting.

We don’t rely on that fully, because there is clearly still blood in the veins at the end of the roasting process, telling us they would have also been exuding blood throughout, without enough time for the rest of the animal to expel it (says Rashba in Torat HaBayit). However, since it is all a stringency, cutting out a finger’s thickness is considered enough.

The Lack of Law

Se’ifim six through ten record debates about how to react if the animal was salted with veins that had not been sliced/punctured, whether to remove just the veins, peel around them, all surprising to AH, who knows the Gemara says salting counts like roasting for many purposes. He suggests it is again all a stringency, because we fundamentally accept ke-vol’o kach polto, whatever was absorbed was also expelled by the heat of the fire.

I’m not going into the details because few of us purchase or cook animals whole. In addition, the conversation makes clear we will not find a clear answer, since these are debates about how much blood we must remove, what kind of blood causes us worry, and how the cooking process affects the issue.

More examples of general principles of the Gemara, well-accepted, whose application was not delineated clearly enough to be determinative. We are left with debates among rishonim and acharonim, all important to our practice today, but amenable to various approaches, awaiting a future Sanhedrin’s clearer ruling. Next time, back to Even HaEzer, for another long siman.

Adapted from articles previously published on Torah Musings