Chullin 96

A mishnah on the latter half of today’s daf begins a section of about 20 pages that contains the majority of talmudic content relevant to contemporary kashrut. All the material we’ve studied thus far about treifot is relevant to those who slaughter, but less so to people who buy their meat. In the next few weeks, we will learn a number of principles relevant to keeping a kosher kitchen, including ideas like the imparting of flavor, nullification and more. Today, we will closely examine the mishnah that begins this discussion:

In the case of a thigh that was cooked with the sciatic nerve in it, if there is enough of the sciatic nerve in it to impart its flavor to the thigh, the entire thigh is forbidden. How does one measure? One relates to it as though it were meat imparting flavor to a turnip.

Earlier, this chapter introduced the prohibition on consuming the sciatic nerve (gid nasheh), the means of removing it and the punishment for consuming it. Today’s mishnah considers: If the gid wasn’t removed and was cooked with the rest of the permitted meat, what’s the status of that meat?

The mishnah introduces an important principle of netinat ta’am, the giving or imparting of flavor. The notion is fairly intuitive: If a forbidden item can be detected by taste, it is meaningfully present and cannot be considered nullified. Nullification is the notion that a trace amount of unkosher food accidentally mixed into a batch of kosher food does not “spoil” the batch. The mishnah states that if we remove the sciatic nerve and the remaining thigh has no detectable flavor from that tissue, we can simply treat what’s left as normal, permitted meat.

The next clause is a bit more ambiguous. The rabbis have declared that if the gid imparts flavor, the otherwise permitted meat is forbidden. But since the gid is prohibited for Jews to eat, how can we allow someone to taste the thigh to see whether it imparted flavor? They might end up consuming something prohibited! The mishnah suggests an imaginative exercise: We consider the nerve as if it were a normal piece of meat, and the thigh as if it were an equivalent volume of turnips, and surmise whether that volume of meat would impart flavor to those turnips. This is a stringent comparison, as turnips are not particularly flavorful, but we’ll see an even more stringent comparison made later in the Gemara, which continues to look for other solutions to this problem. Indeed, the problem of determining whether flavor has been imparted without tasting continues to occupy the rabbis throughout this section of Gemara. Eventually (spoiler alert), the rabbis employ an all-encompassing principle based on a set ratio. But before that standard is concretized, a number of other options are suggested, such as this example in our mishnah of imagining the thigh is turnips and the gid is meat and then considering whether flavor would be imparted.

The mishnah continues:

With regard to a sciatic nerve that was cooked with other sinews, when one identifies it, we measure by the imparting of flavor. And if he does not identify it, all the sinews are forbidden; but the broth is forbidden only if the sciatic nerve imparts flavor to it.

While the first part of the mishnah referred to a gid that was cooked with the rest of the thigh without being removed, this clause refers to a gid that’s been removed from the thigh and cooked with other, similar-looking sinews (that are not forbidden). In this case, if one can still recognize which sinew is the gid nasheh, it is removed and the remaining sinews are permitted — if their volume was large enough to nullify the gid’s flavor. However, since these sinews might look fairly similar, it’s possible that one wouldn’t be able to identify the gid and remove it. In this case, all the sinews are prohibited, because any one of them could be the gid, and its physical presence cannot be nullified, unlike its flavor. The broth, which can be separated from the physical gid, is permitted if its volume is large enough to nullify the gid’s flavor. Some physical foods can be nullified in a mixture. The Gemara will soon explain why the sciatic nerve is an exception to this rule, along with the two other cases our mishnah brings up:

Similarly, in the case of a piece of an animal carcass or a piece of non-kosher fish that was cooked with similar pieces of kosher meat or fish, when one identifies it, the rest of the meat or fish is forbidden only if the forbidden piece was large enough to impart flavor. And if he does not identify and remove the forbidden piece, all the pieces are forbidden, but the broth is forbidden only if the forbidden piece imparts flavor.

Thus begins our entry into the discussion of bitul (nullification) and ta’am (flavor)! The Gemara that follows will build on and complicate a number of the concepts introduced here.

Read all of Chullin 96 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 4, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.