Hello Everyone,
Thank you for attending today’s shiur, I’d like to send a special welcome to Joseph Schlink who is new to the shiur.
Today we finished our discussion about “glatt” meat. As we saw already there are two broad schools of thought about “glatt.” One opinion requires that the lungs be free of all adhesions except for the type specifically permitted by the Gemara. This is the opinion of the Shulchan Aruch, which quotes the Rashba and rules that anyone who deviates from this rule is feeding treifot to the Jewish people.
The other opinion holds that despite the rather arbitrary nature of the rules of treifot, these rules can be interpreted.
We saw that Rashi and his grandson Rabbeinu Tam disagreed about the kashrut of a particular type of sircha and their disagreement reflected these two approaches. Rashi (supporting the view of his teacher) held that a particular sircha is kosher even though the Gemarah never discusses this type of sircha[1]. Rashi felt that it would correct to analyze why a particular type of sircha is ruled to be kosher in the Gemarah and then see if another type of sircha meets the criteria of the Gemarah. Rabbeinu Tam rejects this method of ruling on treifot. He accuses Rashi (his revered grandfather) of feeding treifot to the Jewish people[2] and says that to rule on a novel question of treifot one needs “proof” to establish a leniency and (apparently) logical arguments are not “proof.”
The practice among Ashkenazi Jewry we know was to adopt a more “flexible” approach to “sirchaot.” We learned last week that Ashkenazi authorities distinguished between adhesions that could be dissolved and those that could not; only the latter type were ruled to be forbidden sirchaot. Today we learned about a later development in Ashkenazi practice. In the 18th century Ashkenazi shochtim began to peel sirchaot off of lungs and then to test the lungs for air-leaks. If no air leaked out of the lungs they would rule that the animal is kosher.
This new practice created a storm of controversy but it became widely adopted. The question was put before the great authorities to see if this novelty could be justified. The Aruch Hashulchan provided one explanation[3]. Based on the experience of tens of thousands of cases he said that it is impossible to say that every sircha that has been peeled off from a lung masked a perforation, since these lungs never leak air.[4] So the Aruch Hashulchan (based on early texts) says that sirchaot can be divided into two Halachic categories based on their size. The ancient texts describe forbidden sirchaot as being the width of one ,or at the most, two fingers. The Aruch Hashulchan notes that when the shochet peels off these narrow sirchaot they do lead to air-leaks. On the other hand, wider sirchaot peel off easily and cleanly from the lungs and do not lead to air-leaks. The conclusion that he arrived at is that narrow sirchaot are indeed outgrowths from the lungs (and treif) while broad sirchaot are out growths from a membrane which adhered to the lungs. These broad sirchaot are not the sirchaot forbidden by the Gemarah.
So that is the discussion of glatt. Besides being informative I hope these shiurim gave you all an insight in how the Gemarah is interpreted by our great Poskim and how they sometimes arrive at different conclusions after reading the same texts.
[1] This sircha is called מאומא לאונא . The Gemara says the only type of sirchaot that are kosher are of the מאונא לאונא variety.
[2] There really is no “middle ground” with treifot.
[3] The earlier authority, the Chatam Sofer, offered a similar defense of the practice.
[4] And we saw several weeks ago in our study of abdominal surgery and its impact on treifot that not all authorities admit empirical evidence into a discussion of treifo