[Avodah] Kilayim - Holy or Evil?

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 05:52:17AM +0000, Elazar M. Teitz wrote:
: Although the avneit is germane to the question, the use of the verb
: kuf-daled-shin is not. It is never used in conjunction with shatnez,
: nor for that matter with harba'a, kilei z'ra'im or harkava. It is
: used exclusively regarding kilei hakerem, and means exclusively that
: the resulting crops are asur b'hana'a...

I didn't ask about shaatnez, I asked about kelayim in general.

Yes, I took it for granted that if the notion that mixing kelayim was
bad was true for zeraim, beheimos and shaatnez, it woudl be true
for kerem. Not that we use the same term for a mixture that is avoided
because it's evil and one that's avoided because it's for qedushah only.
I never considered the possibility the answers would differ depending upon
type of kelayim. Which is why my followup question was:
:>                            And what does that say about the Torah's
:> attitude WRT "tampering" with the order of nature?

Again, my presumption of a single meta-question.

It was a presumption, by which I mean, the alternative never crossed my
mind that I would ask and have an answer for why they should be similar
in motive. So I don't have a justification for it. But now that the topic
is raised...

In leshon haTanakh we have cases of /q-d-sh/ meaning separated in a sense
other than holiness. Do we find this in other places in leshon chazal?
RZS's citation from Qidushin 56b that "pen tuqdash" WRT kela'ei kerem
is "pen tuqad eish" is Chizqiyah's derashah of a pasuq. It does not
rule out qedushah; it rules out pidyon.

Admittedly RZS's read is more straightforward. However, I wish to argue
(from my own ignorance, not some encyclopedic knowledge of worse usage)
that the usage of the shoresh /q-d-sh/ was limited to refering to
sanctity by Chazal's day. Do chazal ever call a qedeishah by that term,
except when discussing a pasuq? The times I encountered the subject,
the term used for someone who violates "lo sihyeh qedeishah" is "zonah"
(eg Qidushin 41a). If Chazal thought that kela'ei kerem were "tuqad eish"
for reasons other than qedushah, I don't think they would have used what
appears to be archaic usage, rather than just "assur benaah". Discussions
of chameitz appear to parallel; issur hanaah rather than "omeid leva'eir"
are the norm.

Also, I would wonder why they would assume we learn dinim from
kelayei kerem to zera and to shaatnez (see Y-mi 1:1, 1a) if they were
diametrically opposite in motivation.

Again, I just took it for granted that the issurim for mixtures that used
the same term for mixture were all subtypes of a single concept. I didn't
get into this thinking I had some major justification for the notion.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
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