Vayikra (Leviticus): Shemini > Ch 11

Kosher and Non-Kosher creatures

  • These are the creatures that you may eat among all the animals on earth





G-d tells Moses & Aaron how to become clean after touching dead carcasses

  • Anyone who touches dead bodies of unclean creatures, will be unclean until evening;
  • If any of these dead creatures falls upon anything, it will become unclean, whether it is any wooden vessel, garment, hide or sack, any vessel with which work is done; it shall be immersed in water, but will remain unclean until evening, and it will become clean. Any earthenware vessel, into whose interior any of them falls, whatever is inside it shall become unclean, and you shall break [the vessel] itself. Of any food that is [usually] eaten, upon which water comes will become unclean, and any beverage that is [usually] drunk, which is in any vessel, shall become unclean.
  • Anything upon which any of their carcasses of these [animals] fall, will become unclean. [Thus,] an oven or stove shall be demolished; they are unclean, and, they shall be unclean for you. But a spring or a cistern, a gathering of water remains clean.
  • If their carcass falls upon any sowing seed which is to be sown, it remains clean. But if water is put upon seeds, and any of their carcass falls on them, they are unclean for you.
  • If an animal that you [normally] eat, dies, one who touches its carcass shall be unclean until evening. And one who eats of its carcass shall immerse his garments, and he shall be unclean until evening. And one who carries its carcass shall immerse his garments, and he shall be unclean until evening.


 
Rashi Commentary

  • which has a cloven hoof Split sole
  • which brings up its cud It brings up and regurgitates the [ingested] food from its stomach, returning the food to its mouth, in order to thoroughly crush it and grind it thoroughly.
  • the gull Heb. הַשָּׁלָ Our Rabbis explained: “The שָׁלָ is a bird that draws up (שׁוֹלָה) fish out of the sea” (Chul. 63a). And this is the meaning of Onkelos’ translation [of שָׁלָ]: וְשַׁלֵינוּנָא, “fish catcher.”


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