We’ve recently seen the rabbis concoct some rather unlikely scenarios in order to tease out legal principles. For instance, two days ago we discussed what happens when a fetus extends a limb outside its mother and then retracts it. If the mother is slaughtered, can the fetus be eaten? (Answer: Yes.) Then we reran that scenario, but this time the calf has syndactyly — meaning its hoof is uncloven. Can it be eaten? (Answer: Only if the mother is slaughtered before the fetus emerges.)
Yesterday, we talked about a firstborn male fetus (a potential bekhor – a firstborn male offspring that “opens the womb” and would ordinarily be consecrated as noted on Exodus 13:2) that is dismembered at the moment of its birth. Is it still a bekhor? (Answer: It depends on whether the majority of its body had already emerged.) And then we reran that scenario, but this time a gentile purchases a part of the calf as it is being born. These cases were discussed not because they are likely to actually happen, but because they help elucidate the contours of the law.
On today’s daf, we encounter an even more unlikely scenario. The Gemara continues its discussion of what happens when an animal encounters a difficult labor with a bekhor. In such a case, in order to save the life of the mother, the fetus can be terminated. According to the mishnah, if it’s terminated before it exits the womb, it is not a bekhor and its carcass can be fed to dogs. If it is terminated after the majority of its body emerges, it is a bekhor and its body must be buried. After a back-and-forth in the Gemara between Rabba and Rav Huna regarding what constitutes a majority of its body, Rava enters the chat with a number of increasingly improbable questions about whether various bizarre births render the baby animal unconsecrated. Here’s a taste:
If a weasel entered the womb and swallowed the fetus there, and then exited the womb, bringing the fetus out in its stomach, what is the halakhah?
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It strains credulity to think this could actually happen. A weasel crawls into the womb of a laboring cow, swallows its fetus, and then crawls out. The fetus is obviously dead — and also still in the belly of the weasel. And the question is whether it has been born and thus is a bekhor?!
Okay, maybe this is not exactly the scenario Rava has in mind. The Gemara proposes an alternative — which is even less probable!
The weasel swallowed the fetus and brought it out, and then brought it back into the womb and vomited it out while inside the womb, and the fetus subsequently emerged of its own accord. What is the halakhah in this case?
This complicated sequence of a weasel crawling in and out of a womb, first swallowing and then vomiting up a fetus — which somehow still manages to be born — is also completely absurd.
But that isn’t even the most incredulous scenario. Rava’s final outlandish question is what happens if one presses together the wombs of two laboring animals, both simultaneously giving birth to firstborns, and one fetus exited its mother’s womb and entered the womb of the second animal — which then birthed it. Is this calf a firstborn?
The Gemara cannot answer any of these nonsensical questions, of course. Instead, it simply says:
Teyku: The dilemma shall stand unresolved.
But wild and unanswerable as they were, these questions were not expunged from the record. They remain on the daf, studied for countless generations. Why?
The Talmud may not have answered Rav’s questions, but it has an answer to this one. Back on Sanhedrin 71, embedded in a discussion about legal impossibilities — including the concept of finding a city that is wholly evil and without a single mezuzah — the rabbis explain why these absurdities are even a topic for discussion:
So that you may expound upon new understandings of the Torah and receive reward for your learning.
The reward is in the study itself, and not necessarily in discovering practical information. This is a classic talmudic notion: Whether or not we unearth knowledge that we can actually use, the study of Talmud offers deeper spiritual guidance, while at the same time allowing us to flex our intellectual muscles. There’s real power in the idea that the learning itself is what binds us not only to the text, but to its students throughout time and space, including our own Daf Yomi cohort. What a privilege it is to be thus engaged.
Read all of Chullin 70 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 9, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
