Chullin, Chapter 4, Mishnah 4. We are still standing at the same case that has occupied this chapter: a behemah in hard labor, whose unborn young sends a limb out of the womb before the mother is shechted. Here the mishnah asks what happens when that protruding limb is cut away, and from that narrow question it opens into one of the broadest discussions in the masechet: what exactly does shechitah accomplish in a case where the meat may not be eaten at all?
The case
"Behemah hamaksheh laled vehotzi ha'ubar et yado vachatachah ve'achar kach shachat et imo, habasar tahor." An animal was having difficulty giving birth. The fetus pushed out its foreleg, and someone cut that leg off, and only afterwards was the mother shechted. In such a case the flesh of the fetus is tahor.
A word about the person holding the knife. We are not describing cruelty. He was trying to relieve the mother, who was in terrible distress, and to save her. Nevertheless, the leg he removed carries the status of ever min hachai, a limb taken from a living animal.
An aside: ever min hachai
The prohibition of ever min hachai binds Yisrael and gentile alike; among the seven mitzvot given to the descendants of Noach, this is one of them. It also figures in what Yosef reported to Yaakov about his brothers: he told his father that he had watched them eat a limb pulled from a beast that was still alive and had never been shechted.
What actually happened? The brothers certainly would not have eaten ever min hachai. According to one approach in the Midrash, Yosef saw them eating meat from an animal that was still twitching after shechitah. And here is the point of the dispute. This was before Matan Torah, and there was an ongoing machloket between Yosef and his brothers as to whether they had the status of bnei Noach or of bnei Yisrael. The brothers held that they already had the status of bnei Yisrael, and for a Yisrael the shechitah removes the prohibition of ever min hachai even while the animal still moves. Yosef held that they had the status of bnei Noach, and for a ben Noach ever min hachai remains forbidden, since shechitah does not help him at all.
Another explanation is that Yosef saw them eating the young found inside a mother that had been shechted, which, as we have learned in this very chapter, is permitted through the mother's shechitah and needs no shechitah of its own.
Now to the halachah itself. Any limb detached from a living animal, and equally a limb detached from a fetus, whether that fetus is alive or dead, so long as its mother is alive, has the status of ever min hachai. It may not be eaten, and it conveys tumah just as a neveilah does. So the Bartenura explains it.
Why the flesh of the fetus stays tahor
Return, then, to our mishnah. The leg that was cut off is ever min hachai, and it conveys tumah like neveilah. We would therefore expect the flesh of the fetus, which was attached to that leg at the moment it was severed, to have become tamei. The mishnah rules otherwise: "habasar tahor," the flesh of the fetus is tahor. The Bartenura explains why. At that moment the mother was still alive, and a living behemah cannot receive tumah.
The reverse order: shechitah first, cutting afterwards
The mishnah now reverses the sequence: "Shachat et imo ve'achar kach chatachah." The mother was shechted first, and the protruding foreleg was severed only afterwards. Here the flesh of the fetus was joined to that limb at a moment when the mother no longer had life in her, so the reasoning that helped us a moment ago is no longer available. Rabbi Meir accordingly holds that the flesh is "maga neveilah," carrying the tumah of an item that came into contact with a neveilah, since by that point the meat already qualified as food capable of receiving tumah, and it was in contact with the limb as the knife passed through. Such is the ruling of Rabbi Meir.
The Chachamim rule differently: "maga treifah shechutah." They grant that the flesh was in contact with the emerging limb while it was being cut, and they grant that where eating is concerned the limb is ever min hachai. But in the laws of tumah the flesh of the fetus is treated as having come into contact with an animal that was treifah and then received a valid shechitah.
Consider what that classification means. Suppose an animal has one of the blemishes catalogued in the list of eilu treifot, a lung punctured in a manner that renders it treifah, and it is then slaughtered properly. That shechitah is not empty: once the animal dies, it is not classified as a neveilah. Eating it is forbidden, and the Chachamim laid a tumah upon it, but by Torah law it is tahor and transmits nothing. In the view of the Chachamim, this is exactly the standing of the limb that had emerged when the mother was slaughtered, and flesh that comes into contact with such a limb remains tahor.
The Chachamim's proof and Rabbi Meir's reply
"Mah matzinu betreifah sheshechitatah metaharatah, af shechitat behemah tetaher et haever." Just as we find with an ordinary treifah, not a fetus but simply an animal that became treifah, that its shechitah purifies it even though it may not be eaten, so too the shechitah of this mother should purify the limb that emerged. The shechitah will not permit that limb to be eaten, but it accomplishes at least this much.
"Amar lahem Rabbi Meir: lo." Rabbi Meir will not accept the analogy. "Im tiharah shechitat treifah oto davar shebegufah, tetaher et haever she'eino gufah?" Concede that a treifah is purified by its slaughter, but ask what gets purified: the very body under the knife. Would you extend that to a limb that had already left the animal, a thing that belongs to her body not at all? So long as the young lies within, you may speak of it as part of the mother. From the moment the limb protrudes it is its own item, and the mother's shechitah has no bearing upon it.
The mishnah's own question: how do we know shechitah purifies a treifah?
At this point the dialogue between Rabbi Meir and the Chachamim ends, and the mishnah turns to a matter both sides take for granted. Both agree that when an animal is treifah, with one of the defects we have learned, the shechitah still renders it tahor. "Minayin l'treifah sheshechitatah metaharatah?" From where do we know this, that the animal does not carry the tumah of a neveilah, the status of an animal that simply died without shechitah?
First the mishnah lays out the reasoning that would push us in the opposite direction. "Behemah temei'ah asurah ba'achilah, af treifah asurah ba'achilah." A horse or a donkey, belonging to a species that is not kosher, is forbidden as food, and a kosher animal that turned treifah is likewise forbidden as food. "Mah behemah temei'ah ein shechitatah metaharatah, af treifah lo tetaharenah shechitatah." Slaughter a horse and nothing whatsoever has been achieved; the carcass is tamei. By that logic, slaughtering a kosher animal that has become treifah ought to be just as worthless.
The mishnah answers that the two cannot be equated. "Lo, im amarta bevehemah temei'ah shelo haytah lah she'at hakosher, tomar betreifah shehaytah lah she'at hakosher?" A donkey never had a moment of fitness. From the instant it existed, it was a horse or a donkey and could never be eaten. A cow, by contrast, was a kosher animal and something happened to it and it became treifah. It could not be eaten before shechitah, of course, but it stood to be eaten. It had a she'at hakosher, a time when it was fit to become a meal. The two cases are simply not comparable.
Now the mishnah turns on its own answer: "Tol lach mah shehevata, harei shenoldah treifah min habeten, minayin?" Take back your distinction. Not every animal becomes treifah in the course of its life; some are born that way. If an animal came out of its mother already treifah, from where would you know that its shechitah purifies it? Such an animal, no less than a donkey, never had a moment of fitness.
The mishnah rejects this too, and returns to its original position on firmer ground: "Lo, im amarta bevehemah temei'ah shekein ein bemino shechitah, tomar betreifah sheyesh bemino shechitah?" When you say that shechitah does not purify a non-kosher animal, the reason is that there is no such thing as shechitah for that species at all. No horse and no donkey is ever a candidate for shechitah. A treifah is different. Even one born treifah belongs to a species that has shechitah, a cow, a sheep, a goat, and therefore the shechitah should accomplish this much for it as well.
Ben shemonah chai
The mishnah accepts that argument and closes with one further case. "Ben shemonah chai ein shechitato metaharto, lefi she'ein bemino shechitah." A cow, like a woman, carries for nine months. A calf that came out at eight cannot live, and even if it emerged breathing we do not treat it as viable at all. Slaughtering it, then, does not purify it, and the reason is that its kind is not subject to shechitah in the first place. On this point the ben shemonah chai is filed together with the horse and the donkey: shechitah simply has no application to it.
And here something noteworthy remains. In practice, if one shechts a behemah and finds inside it a ben shemonah, whether alive or dead, it is permitted through the mother's shechitah. Its own shechitah accomplishes nothing, yet the shechitah of the mother permits it.
Reviewing the mishnah
We began with an animal in hard labor whose young extended a foreleg, which was cut off, presumably by someone trying to spare the suffering mother, after which the mother was shechted. The flesh of the fetus is tahor. The severed limb may not be eaten, since it is ever min hachai. The chiddush is that it did not convey tumah to the flesh, and the Bartenura explains that a living behemah cannot receive tumah.
If, however, the mother was shechted first and the protruding limb was cut afterwards, the flesh of the fetus was attached to that limb once the mother was no longer alive, and that answer no longer applies. Rabbi Meir therefore rules that the flesh has the status of flesh that touched a neveilah, which makes it a rishon l'tumah. The Chachamim rule that it has the status of flesh that touched a shechted treifah, which is not tamei min haTorah. Their reasoning: I do not call the protruding limb a neveilah. True, the shechitah does not permit it to be eaten, but that is exactly the case of a treifah, which may not be eaten and yet is rendered tahor by its shechitah. So too here, the shechitah is effective to purify the limb even though it may not be eaten.
Rabbi Meir answers that the comparison fails. A cow with a perforated lung is one of the treifot, and when you shecht it you are shechting its own body, so the shechitah accomplishes purity even though the meat is forbidden. The emerging limb is not the mother's body at all. While the young is inside, you may treat it as part of her; once the limb has come out, it is a separate entity, and the mother's shechitah cannot reach it.
The mishnah then asked, in passing, how we know at all that shechting a treifah spares it the tumah of a neveilah. After all, shechting a horse leaves it tamei; if an animal may not be eaten, the shechitah would seem to be worthless. The answer: a non-kosher animal never had a she'at hakosher, never had a moment when eating it was permitted, whereas a cow that was sound and then became treifah did have such a moment, so there is good reason to say that its shechitah achieves at least this much. To that the mishnah replied, tol lach mah shehevata, consider what your own distinction implies: what about an animal born treifah, which never had a she'at hakosher either? And the resolution was that the original distinction still stands in a stronger form. For a non-kosher animal there never was a possibility of permission, not for this animal and not for any member of its species. For a treifah, even one born that way, the species does have shechitah, and so the shechitah should be effective.
One concession the mishnah did make: a fetus that was carried for eight months alone and came out alive gains nothing from being slaughtered itself. Its status is that of a neveilah, since we take it as established that it cannot live and that no creature of this sort lives.
What remains to be explained is how such an animal becomes permitted through the shechitah of its mother while its own shechitah accomplishes nothing. That, b'ezrat Hashem, is where the next mishnah takes us.