Mishnah Temurah, Chapter 2, Mishnayos 2-3. In this section we move to a new subject: a comparison between the laws and stringencies that apply to ordinary consecrated animals and those that apply to temurah. Altogether the Mishnah lists three stringencies that apply to consecrated animals, two that apply to temurah, and further laws that are equal in both.
Defining the terms:
Animal A - the original consecration: the original animal, which was consecrated by a verbal declaration, "this is an olah" or the like, announcing that it is consecrated.
Animal B - the temurah: a second animal, about which one said that it should be the temurah of A, its exchange or its substitute. Each of these expressions clothes B in the same sanctity that rests upon A. True, this is a Torah prohibition, but the temurah nevertheless takes effect.
On the basis of this division the Mishnah states: "Chomer ba'kodashim mi'batemurah" - there are stringencies that apply to A and do not apply to B, "u'vatemurah mi'bakodashim" - and there are stringencies that apply to B and do not apply to A. And what are they?
The three stringencies in consecrated animals that are absent in temurah:
"She'hakodashim osin temurah v'ein temurah osah temurah" - animal A, which was consecrated from the outset as an original consecration, has the power to generate a temurah; but animal B cannot act upon a further animal to make it a temurah as well. In other words, A makes B, but B does not make C. It is worth noting that A can make B1, B2 and B3, each time a separate prohibition, and even so none of them makes a C. The basis for this is the wording of the verse, "and its exchange shall be holy" - its exchange is holy, but not the exchange of its exchange.
"Hatzibbur v'hashutafin makdishin aval lo memirin" - the community may purchase an animal and consecrate it, for example for the mussaf and tamid offerings, and likewise two partners may jointly purchase a shelamim and bring it together, and there is no problem with that. But they cannot make a temurah, and they have no power to create an animal B out of an animal A held in their joint ownership. The source of the law is the word "yamir" - singular and not plural, and therefore temurah does not take effect on an animal that has multiple owners.
"Makdishin eivarim v'ubarim aval lo memirin" - a person can consecrate a single limb, for example by saying that the leg of a particular animal is consecrated as an olah, and the consecration is halachically valid. So too he can say that the animal's fetus, not yet born, is consecrated as an olah, and this consecration also takes effect.
In the case of a fetus the matter is simple: once it is born it is offered as an olah. As for a limb, if he wishes to limit the consecration to the leg alone, he must sell the animal to another person who wants to bring an olah. The cow is worth a thousand dinars and the leg is worth a hundred: the buyer pays a thousand, nine hundred remain with the owner, and the remaining hundred, the redemption money of the leg, must be used to purchase an olah. This condition is unavoidable.
Incidentally, as was mentioned earlier, one who says about one of the "ha'eivarim she'haneshamah teluyah bahem" - such as the heart or the head - that it is an olah, renders the entire animal an olah. That is a side point, and the main law here is that there is such a thing as consecrating a leg or a fetus as an animal A, "aval lo memirin" - but one does not make a temurah upon a single limb or upon a fetus. The reason: the verse says "an animal," and a limb is not an animal, and likewise a fetus that has not yet been born is not an animal. For this reason a limb or a fetus cannot become an animal B. These are the three stringencies that apply to an original consecration and do not apply to temurah.
The stringency in temurah beyond consecrated animals:
On the other side there are stringencies, one according to the first tanna and two when we include the opinion of Rabbi Yosi, that apply to temurah animals and do not apply to the original consecration. The first of them: "She'hakedushah chalah al ba'alat mum kavua v'eino yotzei l'chullin l'higazez ul'hei'aved".
To understand this: under ordinary circumstances, when a person wishes to perform an original consecration on an animal that has a permanent blemish, it cannot become sanctified as an offering. If he said "this is an olah" and the animal has a split lip, or is missing teeth, or the like, then aside from having transgressed a Torah prohibition and being liable to lashes, the animal is indeed consecrated, but not with kedushas haguf, intrinsic sanctity, since it is unfit to ascend the altar, but only with kedushas damim, sanctity of value, in which only its worth is consecrated.
The animal's value must go up to the altar, but the animal itself cannot. Therefore one must bring another animal or money and redeem the value upon it, and with that money purchase a second animal. This redemption leaves the original animal entirely deconsecrated, since it had nothing more than sanctity of value; and once the value has been removed and the sanctity redeemed onto a coin, the animal goes out to chullin. As long as it remains consecrated as a blemished animal one must treat it as an offering, but once it has been deconsecrated it returns to being an ordinary cow, and it may be sheared, worked with a plow, and its milk is permitted.
By contrast, one who takes a blemished animal - one whose tail was cut off or the like - and declares that it shall be a temurah in place of A, the temurah takes effect even though the animal is blemished, and animal B receives its own inherent sanctity (kedushas haguf). How do we know this? From the verse that forbids exchanging good for bad or bad for good: "good" refers to an unblemished animal and "bad" to a blemished one, and the implication is that one who exchanges bad for good - the temurah does take effect. Therefore, when one makes a temurah with an animal that has a permanent blemish, the animal receives kedushas haguf. It cannot go up on the altar, and it must be redeemed and a fit offering purchased with its value; but since it once possessed inherent sanctity, a trace of that sanctity remains in it forever.
And this is the language of the Mishnah: "shehakedushah chalah al ba'alas mum kavua" - this is a stringency in temurah, that sanctity takes effect on the animal even though it has a permanent blemish. "v'eino yotzei l'chullin liggazez u'l'he'aved" - even after it has been redeemed and another offering purchased with its value, since kedushas haguf was once present here, a trace of that sanctity remains, and it may not be treated as fully unconsecrated. Various laws were stated regarding it, among them the prohibition of shearing - one may not shear its wool - and the prohibition of labor, that one may not work it by pulling a plow and the like. That is the first difference.
"Asah shogeg k'mezid b'temurah":
"Rabbi Yosi bar Yehudah omer: asah shogeg k'mezid b'temurah v'lo asah shogeg k'mezid b'mukdashin" - this is the second difference, and the halachah follows him. With ordinary vows and with the consecration of animals, which are the same type of halachic mechanism, his mouth and his heart must be in agreement: he must intend what he says and say what he intends. If a person intended to consecrate his black cow, but as he said "this one is" he looked at the white cow, pointed to it and said "the white cow is an olah" - his statement is entirely void. The white cow is not consecrated, since he did not intend it, and the black cow is not consecrated, since he did not mention it, and he must go back and consecrate anew.
The novelty here is that with temurah, one who says something in error - for example, he wished to substitute the black cow in place of A and said that the white cow should be the temurah - even though the words slipped from his mouth and he did not intend them, since he said them they are binding, quite apart from the transgression involved in the act. It emerges that shogeg, a statement made in error, is as effective in temurah as mezid, a deliberate statement, and this is unique to temurah and does not apply to animal A.
The basis of this law is a superfluous word in the verse: "V'hayah hu u'temuraso yihyeh kodesh", "then it and its substitute shall be holy" - both it, the original, A, and its temurah, B, become sanctified. Now, the language of "being" appears twice in the same sentence: "v'hayah" and "yihyeh". Why is the second "yihyeh" needed? Could it not have said simply "v'hayah hu u'temuraso kodesh"? Rather, it comes to include an additional case that becomes sanctified, namely consecration done inadvertently. That is why the Mishnah says that with temurah the Torah treated the inadvertent like the deliberate, whereas with consecrated animals it did not treat the inadvertent like the deliberate, and with animal A this is not so.
Five that are not sanctified, neither as hekdesh nor as temurah:
Until now we have dealt with the differences between A and B. Now we come to say that there are five categories of animals that are not fit at all, neither to be animal A nor animal B. Each of them has its own problem on account of which the Torah excluded it, so that it cannot be an offering. And these are they, in the language of the Mishnah: "Rabbi Elazar omer: hakilayim v'hatereifah v'yotzei dofen v'tumtum v'androginos lo kedoshim v'lo makdishin".
Hakilayim: an offspring whose father is a goat and whose mother is a ewe, so that it is neither a goat nor a sheep. And since the verse explicitly lists three possibilities - "shor o kesev o eiz", "an ox or a sheep or a goat" - and repeats "o" twice, teaching that specifically these three possibilities and no others are fit, the crossbred animal is excluded.
Hatereifah: an animal with a fatal defect from which it will eventually die is never fit as an offering. This law too is derived from a verse we already examined at the end of Maseches Bechoros: regarding the tithe of animals it says "kol asher ya'avor tachas hashavet", "all that passes under the rod", meaning that the tenth passes under the rod. And they expounded that only an animal able to walk on its own under the staff is fit. An animal whose leg was severed above the knee joint cannot walk there, and that is one of the eighteen tereifos, and from here we learn that the law applies to all of them.
Yotzei dofen: an animal that was removed from the side, by caesarean section, and not through a normal birth. The verse says "shor o kesev o eiz ki yivaled", "when an ox or a sheep or a goat is born", and emergence from the side is not called a birth, and therefore such an animal cannot be an offering.
Tumtum and androginos: animals whose gender is in doubt. A tumtum is one whose genital area is covered by a membrane, so that it cannot be discerned whether it is male or female. An androginos has both male and female signs together. Our Tanna holds that an androginos is neither male nor female but a third kind of creature, something like a crossbreed. And since the Torah is exacting that the offering be male or female, each offering according to its law, while the tumtum and the androginos are neither this nor that - neither of them can be sanctified as an offering.
Therefore the Mishnah says "lo kedoshim" - they do not become sanctified, neither as animal A nor as animal B. If one takes an androginos animal and says of it "this is an olah" - he has accomplished nothing, and it does not become A; and if he said of it that it should stand in place of his A - he has not made it B. Furthermore, "v'lo makdishin" - one does not take an animal that was already sanctified and in which one of these defects arose in order to make a temurah, B, with it.
And in what case is this speaking? Most of these cases, and especially the androginos, the tumtum and the crossbreed, could never have been an offering at all, and they cannot be animal A that transfers sanctity to B. But in the other two, the tereifah and the yotzei dofen, there is a way in which they could have held sanctity:
Tereifah: this is the clearest case. A person consecrated an unblemished animal and it is a full-fledged offering, animal A with legitimate consecrated sanctity, and afterward it sustained a fatal injury. From now on it no longer has the power to transfer sanctity to B.
Yotzei dofen: a person who consecrated the offspring while still in its mother's womb, saying that the offspring of a particular animal shall be an olah, and in the end the offspring did not emerge in the normal way but through the side, by caesarean section. The offspring is thus a yotzei dofen, and it has no power to be consecrated and no power to produce a temurah, B.
In summary: In this section we studied the comparison between the initial act of consecration and temurah (substitution). Three stringencies apply to consecrated animals: consecrated animals can generate a temurah, but a temurah cannot generate a further temurah; the community and partners can consecrate but cannot make a substitution; and one can consecrate limbs and fetuses but cannot make a substitution with them. On the other hand, there are stringencies in temurah: the sanctity takes effect on an animal with a permanent blemish with sanctity of the body itself, and even after it is redeemed it does not become fully non-sacred so as to be shorn and worked; and according to Rabbi Yose bar Yehudah, Scripture treated one who acts unintentionally like one who acts intentionally. Finally, we examined the five categories - kilayim (a crossbred animal), a tereifah, an animal born by caesarean section, a tumtum and an androgynos - which are neither sanctified nor can they sanctify, neither as the first animal nor as the second.