Sometimes the most profound insights can be found in the middle of very technical discussions. This was the case for me in the course of a discussion on today’s daf. Let’s start with the mishnah:
Slaughter by a gentile renders the animal an unslaughtered carcass, and the carcass imparts ritual impurity through carrying.
The mishnah insists that non-Jews are not allowed to perform shechitah, kosher slaughter. If a non-Jew kills an animal, even if they follow all the laws of kosher slaughter, the animal is still treated as though it has not undergone shechitah: It is not kosher, and treated like any other dead animal, which means that the carcass imparts impurity. The Talmud explains the implications of this ruling:
An unslaughtered carcass, yes. An item from which deriving benefit is prohibited, no.
A carcass that is considered unslaughtered cannot be eaten and makes anyone who carries it impure. However, it can be sold by a Jew, which means Jews can benefit monetarily from it.The Talmud next tries to find out who is the anonymous tanna represented in the mishnah.
Who taught the mishnah? Rabbi Hiyya, son of Rabbi Abba, said that Rabbi Yohanan said: It is not in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer, as doesn’t Rabbi Eliezer say: The unspecified thought of a gentile is for idol worship?
Rabbi Eliezer can’t be the anonymous tanna behind this mishnah. Why? Animals slaughtered for idolatry cannot be used, they cannot convey impurity by carrying, and Jews cannot derive benefit from their sale. Rabbi Eliezer thinks that non-Jews have idolatry in mind all the time, and so if they slaughter an animal, it was dedicated to idolatry and is forbidden for all these purposes. Since the mishnah (as understood by the Talmud) allows Jews to sell this animal carcass and benefit from it, Rabbi Eliezer can’t be the one who taught it.
The Talmud doesn’t actually tell us who taught this original mishnah but instead moves on to a set of statements by Rabbah bar Avuh.
Rabba bar Avuh holds in accordance with that which Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba says that Rabbi Yohanan says: Gentiles outside of the land of Israel are not idol worshippers. Rather, it is a custom of their ancestors transmitted to them.
We spent almost three months studying Tractate Avodah Zarah together, learning how the rabbis of the Talmud manage to avoid idolatry in all forms despite living in a world where most people don’t worship the God of Israel. But here, Rabba bar Avuh pulls the rug out from under us: According to Rabbi Yohanan, there are no idol worshippers outside of Israel. For him, “idol worshipper” is a technical term that refers to those who know about Jewish belief and practice from close geographic relations and choose to worship their own gods anyway. Or perhaps they are the descendants of those Canaanite nations in the land of Israel whom the Torah classes as idolaters. But outside the land of Israel, Rabbi Yohanan insists, these people are not actively rejecting the God of Israel but simply following their own ancestral practices — so they don’t count as idolaters.
The Talmud doesn’t address this statement any further, but I think we should. On the one hand, this position is dismissive of the faith and commitment of non-Jews who are members of other religious communities. As a professor at a Catholic university, I can attest that my Catholic colleagues are deeply educated in their faith and profoundly committed to their theological understandings of the world. On the other hand, by insisting that most non-Jews are not idolaters, this position allows the rabbis to work more closely with the non-Jews in their midst. It paves the way for more collegiality.
Rabbi Yohanan’s teaching thus challenges us to think seriously about how to understand the various non-Jewish communities within which we live, how to expand opportunities for constructive interaction and how to make sure that we are able to mutually benefit from each other.
Read all of Chullin 13 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on May 13, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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