Study Chullin folio 31A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
that the feathers at the front of the neck were unraveled by the arrow, a clear indication that slaughter was performed from the front of the neck.
The Talmud notes another difficulty encountered in the slaughter of a flying bird with an arrow. But doesn’t the bird’s blood require covering with earth? And if you would say that R' Yona bar Taḥlifa covers the blood, but doesn’t R' Zeira say that Rav says: In fulfilling the mitzva of covering the
The Talmud answers that R' Yona bar Taḥlifa would designate for himself the earth of the entire valley [patka] before shooting the arrow. That earth would serve as the layer of earth beneath the blood and he would proceed to cover the blood with another layer of earth.
§ The Mishnah teaches: In a case where one was in the process of slaughtering the animal in the standard manner and he decapitated the animal in one motion, if the length of the knife is equivalent to the breadth of the animal’s entire neck, the slaughter is valid. R' Zeira says: The knife must be
A dilemma was raised before the rabbis: Did R' Zeira mean: Equivalent to the breadth of the animal’s entire neck and extend beyond the neck by an amount equivalent to the breadth of the entire neck, in which case the length of the knife would equal the breadth of two necks? Or perhaps he meant: Equ