Chullin 121

On today’s daf, we continue to analyze the first mishnah of the ninth chapter, which deals with food impurity. Recall that, in general, foods that are edible are susceptible to food impurity and can transfer impurity to other foods as well. Items that are not usually eaten, however, are not susceptible to food impurity — unless a person for some reason intends to eat them.
  
Our mishnah began with a list of animal parts that are generally not eaten, like hide and bones. This list was likely comprehensible to the compilers of the Mishnah. However, by the time of the Gemara, some of the terms were no longer well understood.

The mishnah teaches that the alal joins together with the flesh to constitute the requisite egg-bulk to impart the impurity of food, despite not being considered food itself. To what is the term alal referring? Rabbi Yohanan says: It is referring to the nuchal ligament. And Reish Lakish says: It is referring to the meat residue that is attached to the hide after the knife has flayed the flesh.By the time of Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish, the identification of the alal was a matter of dispute. Is it a ligament in the back of the neck or residual meat clinging to the hide? What follows is a debate that is part philological and part anatomical.
 
The Gemara raises an objection: “But you are plasterers of lies, you are all physicians of no value (elil)” (Job 13:4). Granted, according to the one who says that the word alal is referring to the nuchal ligament (i.e., Rabbi Yohanan) that is (why Job accused his companions of giving advice without merit by making an analogy to a physician who attempts to heal the nuchal ligament) which cannot be healed. But according to the one who says that the word alal is referring to the meat residue that is attached to the hide after the knife has flayed the flesh (i.e., Reish Lakish), flesh that is hanging from the hide is able to be healed.

Our attempt to identify the alal begins, of all places, in the Book of Job — replete with Hebrew words obscure even to the rabbis — where we see the titular character use a word with the same Hebrew root to accuse his companions of giving unhelpful advice. Just as elil in Job refers to a physician of no value, so too does a physician lack value if they try to heal the nuchal ligament, Rabbi Yohanan’s preferred candidate for the meaning of alal in our mishnah. (Once the nuchal ligament is severed, explains Rashi, it cannot be reattached.) 

At this stage, the Talmud takes it for granted that the use of the word elil in Job relates to the alal of our mishnah, so it asks: According to Reish Lakish, what does meat residue have in common with a no-good doctor? The answer is: nothing. And this turns into a challenge to his position. But then, in the very next step, we learn that Reish Lakish doesn’t accept the premise that elil and alal are related words.
 
With regard to the term elil in the verse, everyone agrees that it is referring to the nuchal ligament. When Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish disagree, it is with regard to the definition of the term alal employed by the sages in the mishnah.

At the core is a tension over how to make meaning of words we simply don’t understand. While the rabbis of the Mishnah likely knew what they meant by alal, within just a few generations, the term became obscure. One way to resolve that confusion is to use biblical verses with apparently related words to shed light on its meaning. 

That strategy, however, has its detractors. Reish Lakish, in the Gemara’s understanding, doesn’t think that we can necessarily rely on biblical roots to define words that appear hundreds of years later. On the other hand, when the rabbis of this period came across a word they didn’t understand, how else were they to investigate its meaning? And what better text is there than the Bible to derive that meaning?

Today, we have all sorts of tools unavailable to the rabbis — access to ancient documents, sophisticated online databases, analytical software, and so forth — to do etymological work. But though the tools are newer, that work itself is old. Today’s daf shows us examples of the tools the rabbis did have at their disposal and opens for us a window into the work of making meaning out of confusion.

Read all of Chullin 121 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 29, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.