Today’s mishnah, the first in a new chapter, tees up a conversation about slaughtering a pregnant animal in labor:
If an animal was encountering difficulty giving birth while the fetus extended its foreleg (outside the womb) and then brought it back inside, and then the mother animal was slaughtered, the consumption of the fetus is permitted.
But if the fetus extended its head (outside the womb), even if it then brought it back inside, that fetus is like a newborn.
As is common, the mishnah, written for experts, skips the basics and jumps into a complicated scenario. So let’s step back and review the basics: If a pregnant animal is slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law, it can be eaten and so can its fetus. This is because the fetus is considered part of the mother’s body. However, once the calf is born, it is an independent animal and requires its own kosher slaughter. Why might you slaughter an animal that is in labor? The answer is economics: If the labor is difficult, and it appears the animal will die anyway, then slaughtering it renders the flesh kosher. If the animal dies due to its difficult labor, it is not edible.
The mishnah on today’s daf explores a case in which, during this difficult labor, the fetus extends a limb out of the womb and then pulls that same limb back in. The mishnah asks: Does this count as being born — in which case the baby animal is not kosher because it was not properly slaughtered? Or is the fetus still unborn and kosher by virtue of the slaughter of its mother?
The mishnah has a clear answer to this question: The fetus that extended and then retracted a limb has not been born — and therefore does not require its own slaughter. The calf is not born until its head emerges from the womb.
This general perspective is quickly complicated and nuanced by the Gemara. First, the rabbis assert that although the fetus that extended then retracted a limb is kosher, the limb itself is not. Further, if that limb is amputated prior to the slaughter of the mother, there are questions about whether that changes the equation. There are still more questions about what happens if the mother is slaughtered while the limb is protruding from her body. All will be discussed in more detail in this chapter.
But what really grabs my attention on today’s daf is a question about what happens if the protruding limb has an uncloven hoof. (Recall that mammals must have cloven hooves to be kosher.) How would a kosher animal even bear a calf with an uncloven hoof?
My puzzlement took me down a bit of a rabbit hole, where I learned the word syndactyly, also known as “mulefoot.” In cows, this manifests as a fused hoof, resembling that of a horse or mule. It’s more common in some breeds than others and can make walking difficult. It can also happen to people; about one in 2,000 humans has syndactyly, causing fingers to be webbed or fused together.
Is a syndactyl calf kosher? It comes from a kosher species, so we might suppose that it is. But it also lacks a key sign of kashrut mentioned in the Torah, so perhaps it is not. Today’s daf offers the following complicated answer:
Rabbi Shimon says: A calf with uncloven hooves born from a kosher cow is forbidden, as the calf does not bear the distinguishing characteristics of a kosher species. The verse (discussed earlier in the Gemara) teaches that this matter applies only where the fetus emerged into the airspace of the world. But if it was still inside its mother’s womb when the mother was slaughtered, it is permitted.
According to Rabbi Shimon, a syndactyl calf still in the womb when its mother is slaughtered is kosher, in spite of its fused hooves. If it emerged from the womb beforehand, though, it isn’t kosher. While he connects this to a verse from the Torah, we can also understand how the rabbis might have come to this conclusion through logic: While that mulefoot calf was still in the uterus, it was not (halakhically) an independent animal and therefore simply a part of its (kosher) mother’s body.
In the subsequent law codes, the Mishneh Torah agrees with Rabbi Shimon. But the Shulchan Aruch notes that there are doubts about this conclusion, and the commentaries dive back into the subject with renewed fervor.
Read all of Chullin 68 on Sefaria.
Rabbi Seth Goren was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 2007. Originally from Philadelphia, Rabbi Goren lives in Toronto with his ten-year-old and is Hillel Ontario’s chief executive officer.
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