On today’s daf, the rabbis interrogate the principle that halakhah is decided based on what happens the majority of the time, without concern for random outliers.
From where is this matter that the sages stated: Follow the majority? From where?! As it is written: “… follow the majority …” (Exodus 23:2).
The tone here seems to be exasperated. The source for the principle that we follow the majority, the Gemara asserts, is obvious. After all, we have a biblical verse that says it explicitly.
It’s worth noting that this is not the literal meaning of the verse, which actually states: “You shall not incline after the majority to …do evil.” To read the Torah as telling us that we should incline after the majority, we have to ignore the words “not…” and “to do evil.” This is a legitimate rabbinic interpretive move, but the simple meaning of the verse makes it hard to argue that this interpretation is obvious.
In any case, the anonymous voice of the Talmud rejects the notion that it’s “obvious” in all cases, and explains that the Talmud is interrogating a very particular manifestation of this question:
A majority that is before us, for example, nine shops or the Sanhedrin, we do not raise the dilemma. The dilemma is raised to us when a majority is not before us, for example, the case of a minor boy and a minor girl. From where do we derive it?
The Talmud distinguishes between a case where the majority is “before us” — meaning it is easily calculable in a given moment, and a case where it’s “not before us” — which means it is not easily calculable. It then gives two examples. Rashi explains that the “nine shops” refers to a case where meat is found on a road with nine kosher butcher shops and one non-kosher butcher shop. In this case, we can calculate a 90% likelihood that the meat came from a kosher butcher shop, so the meat can be presumed to be kosher. Similarly, as he explains, the Sanhedrin’s rulings follow the majority of the judges on a judicial panel — a number we can actually count. In both cases, the majority is easily quantified.
But there are other cases where calculating probabilities is impossible. Rashi explains the example here too: Let’s suppose a girl and a boy both below the age of majority enter into a levirate marriage. The rabbis are not concerned that the girl will turn out to be an aylonit or the boy a saris, two categories of people whose sexual development does not follow the usual path. If either ultimately turns out to be an aylonit or a saris, then the levirate marriage would not be required. In a society in which child marriage was considered acceptable, and where non-invasive medical tests didn’t exist to determine internal sex organs, the courts wouldn’t know whether that is the case for years. Rather than wait until the two parties reach the age of majority, the rabbis deem this marriage legitimate. Since the majority of people go through puberty and do not become an aylonit or a saris, we can expect this will be true for these two. In this case, the facts on the ground are not calculable, but we can still make an educated guess about what will happen and proceed with confidence.
The Talmud continues to explore how the rabbis derive the principle that we incline after the majority in cases like this last one, where there is no specific data to assess. In fact, the text is going to explore nine different possible sources for this ruling. At the end of that inquiry, on the top of tomorrow’s daf, the rabbis conclude:
Where it is possible, it is possible. Where it is not possible, it is not possible.
In other words: When stores, judges, or other things can be counted, we count them precisely. And when that isn’t possible, we rely on what we know about the world more broadly. Whether there is good data or not, decisions need to be made and the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Read all of Chullin 11 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on May 11, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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