Bekhorot 33 – בכורות ל״ג | Daf Yomi with Rashi, Tosafot, the Rambam and halacha
What Bekhorot 33 teaches
- Beit Hillel permit any ritually impure person, including a menstruating woman, to eat the meat of a blemished firstborn.
- A disqualified offering cannot be flayed from the feet because preserving the hide tears the flesh and reduces value.
- The Rabbis allow bloodletting a congested firstborn to save it, but prohibit slaughtering it based on any resulting blemish.
The sugyot
- Beit Hillel permit a non-priest to eat a blemished firstborn via a קל וחומר from an impure priest, rejecting a refutation based on sacrificial service.
- The Gemara debates whether a blemished firstborn may be fed to gentiles, analyzing the three scriptural comparisons to gazelle and deer.
- Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel debate whether a menstruating woman may eat a blemished firstborn, concluding with Beit Hillel that all impure people may partake.
- The Gemara investigates who forbids skinning a בכור or disqualified offering from the feet, and why financial gain does not permit it.
- The Mishnah debates whether one may bleed a congested firstborn to save its life, and whether a resulting blemish permits slaughtering the animal.
- The Gemara examines bloodletting a congested firstborn, rejecting parallels to doubtful heave-offering, and grounds disputes in biblical verses regarding blemishes and secondary violations.
Halachot from the daf
- Feeding meat of a blemished firstborn to gentiles or dogs
- Communal offerings overriding the prohibition of corpse impurity
- Offering the Paschal sacrifice in impurity when the community is impure
- Offspring of redeemed disqualified consecrated animals regarding bekhorah
- Permitting gentiles to partake of a blemished firstborn animal
- Eating from a Paschal offering brought in ritual impurity
- Entering the Sanctuary during communal offerings brought in ritual impurity
- Skinning an animal intact via its feet on Yom Tov
- Skinning a blemished firstborn intact via its feet
- Slaughter of a redeemed blemished sin-offering before or after blood sprinkling
- Selling redeemed disqualified consecrated animals in the butchers' market
- Bloodletting for a congested firstborn animal
- Handling a barrel of teruma that contracted doubtful ritual impurity
- Leavening a sacrificial meal-offering remnant that was already leavened
- Performing an act of castration on an already castrated individual or animal
- Inflicting an additional blemish on an already blemished consecrated animal
Gems from the Daf
- Iyun of the day: Causing a Blemish on a Blemished Offering
- Daf prep: Before you learn Bekhorot 33
- 3 to remember: Bekhorot 33: three things to remember
- The Passuk: Eating the Blemished Firstborn Like Wild Game
- Halachot: Skinning Intact Hides and Preserving Congested Firstborns
- The Rambam’s view: The Rambam on Firstborns and Communal Impurity
- Tosafot: Blemishes, Sanctity, and Scriptural Derivations in Bekhorot
- Machloket: Who May Eat a Blemished Firstborn Offering?
- The inner dimension: The Pushed-Aside Offering and the Taint of Self-Interest
- Words to know: Bekhorot 33: words to know
- Masechet so far: The masechet so far, chapter by chapter
- Elsewhere in Shas: Bekhorot 33 elsewhere in Shas
Learn Bekhorot 33 sugya by sugya on Super Daf: the Gemara in Hebrew and English with Rashi, Tosafot, the Rishonim, the Rambam and the Shulchan Arukh woven in. Free.