Zevachim 31

There are consequences for intending to eat a piece of sacrificial meat outside of its designated space or time. The former renders the sacrifice ineffective, but the latter prohibits the sacrificial meat and imposes karet on anyone who consumes. For these consequences to apply, the quantity of meat must be at least one olive bulk. Anything less is not considered significant. 

On Zevachim 29, we learned about a case in which a person has the intention to eat half an olive bulk outside of its designated space and half outside of its designated time (or vice versa). In that case, the offering is disqualified and one does not receive karet for burning or eating the meat. In other words, the two intentions add up to disqualify the offering, but since there is no intention to eat a full olive bulk outside of its proscribed time, karet does not apply.

On today’s daf, the Talmud makes things a bit more complicated:

It was stated: If one had intent to eat half an olive bulk beyond its designated time, half an olive bulk outside its designated area, and another half an olive bulk beyond its designated time, Rava says: In such a case, the piggul (the prohibited status of sacrificial meat after the proscribed time for consuming it has expired) has “awaked as one asleep” (Psalms 78:65). And Rav Hamnuna says: It constitutes a mixture of improper intentions. 

A person has a series of three intentions, one to eat a half olive bulk of sacrificial meat beyond the designated time for doing so, a second to eat the same quantity of meat outside of the Temple, and a third just like the first. The question is, do the two intentions to eat half an olive bulk outside of their assigned time add up or does the second, interposing intention prevent them from doing so? If the two intentions do add up, one who eats of the sacrifice is subject to karet.

Rava says that they combine, drawing an image from Psalms: the prohibition, he says, awakens in stages, roused a bit by the first intention and the rest of the way by the subsequent one. Rav Hamnuna disagrees, suggesting that we are dealing with a heterogeneous mixture of three distinct thoughts. Two separate intentions to eat a half olive bulk are not, in his view, equivalent to an intention to eat a whole olive bulk.

Rav Ashi cites similar case and the ruling of Bar Kappara:

If one had intent to eat half an olive bulk beyond its designated time, and then intended with regard to a whole olive bulk to eat half of it outside its designated area and half of it beyond its designated time, Bar Kappara teaches that the offering is rendered piggul, because the half an olive bulk is not effective to interfere where the intent of piggul concerns a whole olive bulk.

Unlike the first case in which there are three different intentions, here there are only two. The first is the intent to eat half an olive bulk after its prescribed time, which, on its own, is not a legally significant act. The second intention is a split one: a simultaneous thought to consume half outside the designated space and half outside the designated time. Bar Kappara rules that the intention to eat half an olive bulk outside of the designated space is not significant enough to get in the way of adding the original intent to half of the final one. Thus, the two intentions to eat half an olive bulk outside of their designated time are additive and the meat becomes piggul. 

Bar Kappara’s ruling that the intention to eat half an olive bulk outside of its designated space in this case is not strong enough to prevent the other two half olive bulks from combining (even the one whose intention was determined simultaneously) helps the legal commentators settle the first dispute and Rava’s opinion is codified into the law. 

Read all of Zevachim 31 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on October 15, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.