Hello Everyone,
Today we began the discussion of “glatt.” As is well-known, the word “glatt” means “smooth” in Yiddish (and according to “Google Translate” this is true for German and Swedish as well). The “smoothness” (“glattheit” in German, again according to Google) refers to the surface of the animal’s lungs. The Gemarah in masechet Chullin rules in apparently unambiguous fashion that if on the surface of the lungs there adhesions which connect one lobe of the animal’s lungs to a distant lobe the animal is not kosher.
The Shulchan Aruch, following the Rashba records this as the final law.
Despite the apparently unambiguous nature of the ruling in the Gemarah , in Northern Europe (“Ashkenaz”)the custom was to attempt to dissolve (or even detach) these adhesions (which are known as “sirchaot”). The Rashba and Shulchan Aruch condemned this Ashkenazic practice in the strongest terms; they wrote that whoever practices this custom is guilty of feeding non-kosher food to the the Jewish people. Even the Rema, who wrote the standard Ashkenazic commentary to the Shulchan Aruch was hard-pressed to find a basis for this widespread custom.
So what is the basis for Askenazic practice of removing adhesions? The 13th century authority, Rabbeinu Asher (known as the “Rosh”) writes in his commentary to Chullin, that the custom is based on the writings of the post-Talmudic Geonim. From a story about Rav Yakov Gaon it is possible to ascertain that the Geonim recognized two types of adhesions. There are firm adhesions which cannot be easily broken and these are the “sirchaot” which render an animal a “treifah.” Then there are fragile adhesions which can be separated easily from the lungs or dissolved. These adhesions are merely accumulations of mucous and are Halachically benign.
So today we saw how a custom that is apparently in violation of the Gemarah was defended by the Ashkenazic Rishonim. I mentioned during the shiur the writings of the late Professor Yisrael Ta-Shma z”l. In his great work מנהג אשכנז הקדמון he explains the great authority given to minhag in Ashkenaz. According to the Rashba, almost all the Ashkenazic Jews were eating treif. This contention was absolutely unacceptable to the ashkenazic authorities. It cast an aspersion on the piety of their ancestors and needed to be refuted. The Rosh shows how the custom evolved from a post-Talmudic source (the story of Rav Yakov Gaon).
In the next shiurim we will see more examples of how customs regarding treifot are attacked and defended by various authorities.