Throughout this chapter, we’ve been discussing what wounds render an animal a treifa, and therefore unkosher. Treifa status, we learned, is anchored in the notion that an animal with such wounds cannot live long. On today’s daf, there’s a dispute over just how close to death an animal must be to be considered a treifa.
Rav Huna says: The sign of a treifa is 12 months. The Gemara raises an objection from a beraita: The sign of a treifa is any animal that cannot give birth. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: If its health improves continuously, it is certainly kosher; if its health deteriorates continuously, it is certainly a treifa. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: The sign of a treifa is any animal that does not survive 30 days. The sages said to him: But don’t many animals that are certainly treifot survive two or three years?
Rav Huna’s statement is likely the most familiar: He says that a treifa will certainly die within 12 months. Rashi clarifies the significance of this timeframe: If this is true, then an animal suspected of having one of these defects can be observed for 12 months, and if it’s alive at the end of that time, we know it isn’t a treifa.
But the Gemara raises an objection from a beraita. The beraita brings other criteria for defining a treifa: whether it can give birth, whether its health improves or deteriorates, or whether it lives 30 days. The final opinion of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi is contested by other sages, who suggest that, sometimes, a treifa can live even two or three years! Importantly, none of these opinions appears to align neatly with Rav Huna’s criteria of 12 months.
With regard to our non-time-bound criteria, the Tosafot, commenting on the clause “The sign of a treifia is any animal that cannot give birth,” note that there are reasons an animal may not be capable of giving birth or may stop being fertile that don’t render it a treifa; therefore, rather than reading this as a statement that all animals that can’t give birth are certainly treifot, they suggest it actually means all animals that can give birth are certainly not treifot.
Having brought a slew of tannaitic opinions that all appear to contradict Rav Huna’s halakhah, the Gemara must find a way to defend him:
The matter is a dispute between tannaim, as it is taught in a beraita: And in a skull that contains one long hole, or even if it has many holes, the areas of the holes join together to constitute the size of a drill hole, and they render the animal a treifa. Rabbi Yosei ben HaMeshullam said: There was an incident in a place called Inbul involving one whose skull was missing a piece, and they made for him a patch out of the shell of a gourd, and he survived. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said to him: Can you bring proof from there? It was summer then, and once winter came upon him, he died immediately.
The stam, the anonymous voice of the Talmud, suggests that the beraita quoted above represents some, but not all, tannaitic opinions on what constitutes a treifa and introduces a competing beraita. In trying to determine whether deficiencies in the skull render an animal a treifa, Rabbi Yosei ben HaMeshullam brings a story of a person whose skull was missing a piece, for whom people made a life-saving patch. This suggests that missing a piece of the skull doesn’t necessarily render an animal a treifa. Funnily enough, this story continues a trend seen in the last daf, which mentions people trying to heal their animals with makeshift treatments — making a reed splint for a hen with a dislocated femur or a reed seal for a windpipe, or placing a hen in an oven to warm. The story in our beraita, though it refers to a human, follows a similar pattern: Someone else points out that the animal or person in question survived only a brief amount of time, so this defect could still render them a treifa.
Rashi explains that Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar’s language about the seasons, where he notes that the person survived summer but died when winter arrived, provides the tannaitic support Rav Huna’s position. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar insists that Rabbi Yosei ben HaMeshullam’s story would only prove that an animal with a defective skull isn’t a treifa if the patient referenced had survived all the major seasons; therefore, he must also hold, like Rav Huna, that 12 months is the relevant timeframe for determining treifa status.
Though we found only one tannaitic opinion here to bolster Rav Huna’s position, we see it reflected among other amoraim on our pages; therefore, most later halakhic decisors rule in accordance with Rav Huna. This means that if there’s an animal who’s suspected without clear proof of being a treifa and it lives more than 12 months, the animal is permitted.
Read all of Chullin 57 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on June 26, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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