Chullin 110

We have been discussing the prohibition on consuming meat and milk that have been cooked together. This led to a discussion about whether one is permitted to cook and consume an udder. The concern is that the udder contains residual milk that will mix with the flesh in the cooking process, violating the meat-and-milk prohibition.

The udder question proved to be a fascinating gray area. Some sages held that milk should first be drained from the udder, while others asserted that this is unnecessary because milk that has never been expressed from an udder (by the animal’s nursing young) is not really milk (for the purposes of this prohibition). In fact, when Yalta, a sage’s wife, expresses a yen to know what meat cooked in milk tastes like, she is served udder.

Overall, the rabbis’ inclination is to be lenient on the consumption of udders. Even those who think it is best to eschew undrained udders do not think it is post-facto a problem if someone eats them.

On today’s daf, the Gemara moves on to a similar concern about liver. One of the liver’s primary anatomical functions is to filter blood, and at any given moment the liver contains a significant percentage of the animal’s blood. The Torah forbids the consumption of blood, but it is not easy to remove all blood from the liver through salting, the process used for removing blood from other cuts of meat. Yet, liver is kosher. When I was growing up, chopped liver was hailed as an Ashkenazi classic (though I cannot say I ever understood why). How is this possible? The rabbis assert that the blood is removed from the liver during cooking. So long as that blood is not absorbed by other foods that are cooked with (or, specifically, under) the liver, and is properly drained away, the liver is kosher.

Livers and udders are interesting organs to discuss because both naturally contain things that are, or seem, forbidden. We might have supposed the obvious route for the rabbis was simply to err on the side of caution and forbid these organs. Instead, they consistently make a different choice, ruling leniently or looking for processing solutions to permit these cuts of meat.

In all this back-and-forth, one exchange from today’s daf stood out to me. The context is Rav’s teaching, which we now have context to understand is relatively stringent, that an udder cannot be consumed unless its milk is drained before cooking:

When Rabbi Elazar ascended from Babylonia to the land of Israel, he found Ze’eiri and said to him: Is there a tanna who taught Rav that an udder (that is cooked without first being drained of milk is forbidden)?
 
Ze’eiri showed him Rav Yitzhak bar Avudimi.
 
Rav Yitzhak bar Avudimi said to Rabbi Elazar: I did not teach Rav that an udder is prohibited at all; rather, Rav found an unguarded valley and fenced it in.

In Rabbi Elazar’s travels through the Jewish world, he looks for the person who taught Rav this stringency about udders. When he finally finds someone who may have taught Rav the strict halakhah, that person demurs: “I did not teach Rav this law.” So where did Rav learn this stringency? Turns out, he wrote it himself in order to “fence” a “valley.” The Talmud explains:

As when Rav arrived in Tatlefush, he heard a certain woman saying to another: How much milk does it require to cook a quarter weight of meat? Rav said: Evidently, these people are not learned enough in halakhah to know that meat cooked in milk is prohibited. Rav tarried in that place and prohibited even udders to them.

In his own travels, Rav discovers a Jewish community unaware of what we might consider kashrut 101. In the obscure town of Tatlefush, Rav overhears a woman casually ask her friend for the ancient equivalent of a manzo al latte (milk-braised beef) recipe and infers that the entire community has no idea of the prohibition on cooking meat and milk together. So, he teaches them. And for good measure, he also tells them they may not eat udders. He is placing a fence around their lack of knowledge — making the law both stricter and simpler to avoid mistakes.

Rav believes that people new to kashrut need clear boundaries and categories. But for others, who are more familiar with the rules, nuance and leniency — in the form of consuming udders and livers — are possible.