We’ve been learning how to identify a kosher bird, whether through its physical traits or by recognizing the species. Today’s daf is particularly invested in the latter, focusing on the etymologies of the names of forbidden birds listed in the Torah. For example, according to Rabbi Yehudah, the shalakh, which modern scholars identify as the cormorant, is so named because it “scoops (sholeh) fish from the sea.”
This brief etymological digression inspires the Gemara to recall that Rabbi Yohanan, who lived in Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, had a particular affinity for the shalakh:
When Rabbi Yohanan would see a shalakh, he would say: “Your justice is like the great deep; human and animal You deliver, O Lord” (Psalms 36:7).
As the Talmud has already reminded us, cormorants are water birds. They hunt fish in lakes and other bodies of water, like the Sea of Galilee. When Rabbi Yohanan saw them diving into the water and emerging with their helpless prey, he was reminded of a verse in Psalm 36 that waxes poetic about God’s judgment extending to the deepest reaches and God’s jurisdiction reaching to both humans and animals. The shalakh becomes, in Rabbi Yohanan’s imagination, the agent of God, catching and eating the fish who are deserving of divine justice.
In a deeply legal passage, focused on what’s kosher and what isn’t, the Talmud unexpectedly gives us a window into one beloved sage’s way of looking at the world. When Rabbi Yohanan saw cormorants diving into the Sea of Galilee, he could have thought about their kosher status, the lists of non-kosher birds in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, or the mishnah on Chullin 59a. Instead, Rabbi Yohanan reflects on the psalms, with their poetic reflections on divine justice and the relationship between God and the animal kingdom.
Rabbi Yohanan’s response reminded me of a radically different, yet equally rich, spiritual lens, that of the 20th century thinker Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: “When halakhicman looks to the eastern horizon and sees the first light of dawn and the glowing rays of the rising sun, he knows that this … sunrise imposes upon him anew obligations and commandments. Dawn and sunrise obligate him to fulfill those commandments that are performed during the day: the recitation of the morning Shema, tzitzit, tefillin, the morning prayer, etrog, shofar, Hallel, and the like…”
For Rabbi Soloveitchik, Jewish law, halakhah, is the lens through which to make sense of the natural world. Soloveitchik asks himself: How do I make sense of the world? And he answers: through practicing all the Jewish legal obligations, including those that attach to natural phenomena, thereby binding myself to the divine. Rabbi Soloveitchik is the ultimate “Halakhic Man” (also the name of a famous essay he wrote), whose connection to God and to the world is mediated and navigated through Jewish law and ritual.
Rabbi Yohanan’s religious lens is profoundly different but equally powerful. He sees the natural world — the diving cormorant of our sugya instead of the rising sun of Soloveitchik’s essay — and connects it to the poetry of the psalms. Rather than asking what halakhic obligations the bird creates, he instead asks what theological ideas the bird reveals. For Rabbi Yohanan, the diving cormorant presents an opportunity to ponder God’s dominion over all living creatures.
Tractate Chullin, like most of the Talmud, is a work of intricately detailed legal rules, guiding the reader on how to live in accordance with God’s law — specifically, kashrut. It’s a tractate that seems perfectly suited for those who connect to God like Rabbi Soloveitchik, as halakhic people who think in legal categories and with ritual attunement. Yet in today’s daf, in the middle of that legal discourse, Rabbi Yohanan witnesses a specific variety of unkosher bird and responds to it not with chiding about what should or shouldn’t be on a person’s plate, but with a verse of poetry and a theological reflection. Remarkably, the Talmud preserves both the ritual rules needed to live an observant life and the reflections of a rabbi who sees a treyf bird and thinks about the divine.
Read all of Chullin 63 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 2, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
Rabbi Ephraim Pelcovits is a Los Angeles–based Jewish educator and consultant who teaches, mentors fellowship cohorts and advises philanthropic initiatives. He has served in congregational, academic and nonprofit leadership roles.
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