Today’s daf finds us in the middle of an arcane and uncomfortable discussion. We have already established that a firstborn donkey, which is not kosher, is redeemed with a lamb, which is. There is an alternative: If you cannot redeem your donkey with a lamb, or simply don’t wish to, you can break its neck to kill it. This is not a rabbinic innovation, but biblical law — see Exodus 13:13 and Exodus 34:20.
After the peter chamor (firstborn donkey) is redeemed, one may derive benefit from it. That’s pretty much the point of redemption: It changes the status of the donkey so it becomes like any other animal and you can now put it to work or sell it, as you would other livestock. A key question on today’s daf is whether the same is true in the case of breaking the donkey’s neck. That is, if you choose not to redeem your peter chamor and instead kill it, can you then derive benefit from its carcass?
This, in turn, widens into a set of questions about whether one may derive benefit from the animal not only after but perhaps also before it is redeemed or killed. And, as is the Talmud’s wont, considerable energy is devoted to determining which rabbis hold which position and what their reasoning is.
Reading the daf, I was less taken by legal arguments than I was by the brief glimpses of everyday Jewish life in antiquity that came through the examples under consideration. They obscure more than they reveal, but I’d nonetheless I’d like to share a few now — as a means of looking back in time, albeit through a rather smudged window.
Early on, we encounter the assertion that potentially edible items from which one cannot derive benefit are, definitionally, not food — and therefore not susceptible to food impurity. But this is quickly challenged: Mixtures of meat and dairy are forbidden for both consumption and benefit, but does this mean that a cheeseburger is not food (and therefore not susceptible to food impurity)? Or does the fact that non-Jews eat and enjoy these foods make them, even for Jews, food — in the sense that they can contract impurity? And what else do gentiles eat that Jews cannot? Apparently, most meats they can acquire:
A carcass of a non-kosher animal, found in any location; or an unslaughtered carcass of a kosher bird or the fat of a kosher animal.
It’s clear the rabbis were integrated into their surrounding communities enough to be aware of non-Jewish food preferences. Still, I wonder: Are those preferences reported with disgust? Jealousy? Neutrality? It’s hard to know. I’ve heard modern-day rabbis muse that a cheeseburger probably tastes delicious, though they have never tried one. I’ve heard others reminisce about a time in their lives when they enjoyed bacon. Did ancient rabbis feel the same way about forbidden meats? Or do they feel the way I do about shellfish — that sampling it doesn’t even sound appetizing.
Here’s another slice-of-life moment that caught my eye:
It was taught in a beraita: Rabbi Yosei says: Nimos, brother of Rabbi Yehoshua HaGarsi, once related to me that one who slaughters a crow in order to teach himself, its blood renders other foods susceptible to impurity.
The halakhic issue here is complex, but the image is not: using crows to practice kosher slaughter. Many questions spring to mind: Was kosher slaughter considered difficult enough that many people had to practice? Did people practice on crows because they were nuisances? Because they were easy to catch? Because they are similar enough to other kosher birds?
Once again, these aren’t questions that interest the Talmud, so we have no more information on them, but the tiny “slice of life” from antiquity is intriguing.
Here’s one more, imported from Kiddushin 56b:
In the case of one who betroths a woman with a firstborn donkey, she is not betrothed.
We are meant to understand that the betrothal did not take effect because the unredeemed donkey could not, according to this source, be used for benefit. But what’s interesting to me, again, is what else might be happening in this moment: Why did he choose a young, firstborn donkey for betrothal? Is he a poor man who desperately wants to marry the love of his life and this is his only animal (apart from the mother donkey)? Or is he miserly and unscrupulous, trying to weasel out of the cost of redeeming the donkey and score a “free” wife in the process?
Rather than scrapping the marriage, one rabbi proposes a pragmatic workaround: If the bride supplies her own lamb to redeem the donkey, the net profit is enough to seal the deal. It’s hard not to smile at that image — a bride quietly fixing her fiancé’s legal blunder just to get their marriage across the finish line. These passages don’t just record ancient law; they capture the ambient noise of everyday life. Centuries later, the legal mechanics of a peter chamor may feel remote, but the impulse to hone a craft, practice pest control, wonder about forbidden flavors or salvage an awkward romance feels intimately familiar.
Read all of Bekhorot 10 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 28, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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