Kinnim, Chapter 1, Mishnah 1. Masechet Kinnim is devoted almost entirely to a single problem: bird korbanot that became mixed together, so that we no longer know which bird is which. Before the Mishnah can take up those mixtures, it has to lay down the basic laws of the birds themselves, and that is exactly what our mishnah does.
There are two kinds of bird offering, a chatat and an olah, and they are not brought in the same way. The details of those differences will occupy the closing mishnayot of the Masechet, but our mishnah already introduces the central one. Two species may be used for a bird korban: torim, turtledoves, and bnei yonah, young pigeons.
A bird offering can arise either from obligation or from free will. When it comes by free will it is always an olah, for the Torah knows no chatat that a person brings by choice. Obligatory birds come two at a time, one of them designated a chatat and its partner an olah. Voluntary birds also tend to come two at a time, since someone who undertakes a bird olah usually accepts two of them upon himself, and then both go up as olot. Exceptions exist in either direction, but this is the general picture.
The word ken denotes such a twosome, two birds together; the plural is kinim, and that word gives our Masechet its name. Precisely because birds arrive two by two, confusion between them is almost inevitable, and it is those confusions that the Masechet sets out to sort.
Who brings an obligatory pair of birds
An obligatory ken, one bird a chatat and one an olah, is brought in six situations:
- Anyone who violated one of the three aveirot set out where perek hey of Sefer Vayikra begins: refusing to testify about what he witnessed, defiling kodashim, and false or unfulfilled oaths.
- A woman who has given birth and lacks the means for the fuller set of korbanot.
- A zav upon his purification.
- A zavah upon her purification.
- A nazir who contracted tumah from a dead body.
- A metzora whose purification has arrived and who lacks the means for animals.
As the list shows, both men and women can become obligated in these offerings. Still, they fall to women far more often, since childbirth and the state of zavah are common. For that reason the mishnayot of our Masechet will usually frame their cases around women bringing pairs of birds.
Chatat below, chatat above
The mishnah begins: "Chatat ha'of na'aseit lemata, vechatat behemah lemala." A crimson stripe ran around the outside of the mizbe'ach, splitting it into two zones, an upper and a lower, and that stripe decides where each korban's blood belongs. For a bird brought as a chatat the blood is placed beneath the stripe; for an animal chatat, above it.
Every korban turns on two principal avodot: the killing and the placing of the blood. Birds are not slaughtered in the ordinary manner. For a bird chatat the kohen performs melikah, driving his thumbnail through the nape of the neck and killing the bird in that way, and this counts as its shechitah. He then sprinkles some of the blood on the mizbe'ach's wall and squeezes the bird against that wall to press out the rest, letting it run down to the yesod, the base.
Scripture requires that a chatat's blood reach the yesod. That requirement is what teaches that with a bird the blood must go beneath the crimson stripe: place it higher up and there would be occasions when it would not travel all the way down to the base.
With an animal chatat, ordinary shechitah is required. The kohen receives the blood and applies it on top of the mizbe'ach, to the four corners that stand there.
Olah above, olah below
"Olat ha'of na'aseit lemala, ve'olat habehemah lemata." For a bird brought as an olah the blood goes above the crimson stripe, in the mizbe'ach's upper zone, whereas an animal olah has its blood placed beneath the stripe, in the lower zone. The pattern flips: the bird now belongs high and the animal low, exactly the reverse of what we saw with the chatat.
The bird olah too is killed by melikah, and its blood too is drawn out by pressing the bird so that it drains onto the mizbe'ach's wall. The pesukim speak of this squeezing immediately after the burning of the bird's head atop the mizbe'ach, and that juxtaposition teaches that the squeezing belongs on the wall up near the top, where the head is being consumed. This is the source for the distinctive law that a bird olah, in contrast to a bird chatat, is performed in the upper zone.
An animal olah undergoes normal shechitah; the kohen collects its blood and puts it on two corners that stand across from one another on the diagonal. Here as well a pasuk indicates that the blood is placed facing the yesod, which sits in the lower zone.
Getting it wrong invalidates the korban
"Im shinah bazeh uvazeh, pasul." Should the kohen reverse the placements, putting a bird chatat's blood in the upper zone or a bird olah's blood in the lower one, the korban is void.
Everything the Masechet goes on to build rests on this ruling. Since an error in where the blood goes does not merely weaken the korban but destroys it, a bird whose status is uncertain, chatat or olah, may not be brought to the mizbe'ach at all.
The order of the pairs
The mishnah now turns to a second area of law: "Seder kinim kach hu." This is the arrangement of bird pairs. "Hachovah, echad chatat ve'echad olah." When the pair is obligatory, one bird is a chatat and one is an olah. In the cases we listed, a zav, a zavah, a woman after childbirth who cannot afford animals, the Torah states explicitly that one bird serves as a chatat and one as an olah.
"Binedarim uvinedavot, kulan olot." When the birds are not obligatory but voluntary, brought as a neder or a nedavah, all of them are olot. There is no voluntary chatat. A bird that a person brings of his own initiative is necessarily an olah.
What is a neder and what is a nedavah
The mishnah now defines the two terms it has just used. "Eizehu neder? Ha'omer, harei alai olah." A neder is when a person says, "It is upon me to bring an olah." He has obligated himself, and he must afterward designate a bird or an animal to fulfill what he undertook.
"Ve'eizehu nedavah? Ha'omer, harei zo olah." A nedavah is when someone points to a specific creature and declares, "This is an olah." No obligation was ever attached to his person; the kedushah landed straight on the item. What he owes now is that identical creature and no substitute. Nothing in the Torah demanded this korban of him, so its origin is entirely voluntary, yet his words have turned it into something he must bring.
The practical difference
"Mah bein nedarim linedavot?" Both people are now committed to bring an olah, so in what respect does the halachah treat them differently? "Ela shehanedarim, metu o nignevu, chayavin be'achrayutan." Where a person bound himself by a neder, the death or theft of the animal or bird he set aside leaves him owing a replacement. The obligation sat on him and not on the creature; setting the bird aside was merely his way of paying off his vow, and if that bird can no longer go up on the mizbe'ach, the vow remains outstanding and another olah is due.
"Unedavot, metu o nignevu, ein chayavin be'achrayutan." With a nedavah, should the designated birds or animals die or be stolen before they reach the mizbe'ach, nothing further is required of him. He took no personal commitment upon himself; he only sanctified these particular birds as olot. The moment they can no longer be offered, his duty lapses.