[Avodah] Forms of Bitul (was: Halachic Policy Guidelines of the Kashrus Authority of Australia)

[Chana Luntz]

[Since RnCL intentionally split the conversation in two, I took the liberty of
modifying her subject line so that the two threads stay more distinct. -micha]

I wrote:
>: See this is where I disagree.  I think you need to distinguish the case of
>: the three pieces of meat and the genuine mixture case, by which I mean eg
>: the classic case of a drop of milk falling into a meat stew.  In the latter
>: case, it seems to me it is nothing to do with probabilities, it has to do
>: with the drop of milk being completely overwhelmed by the meat stew and
>: thereby disappearing from existence, with its identity and particularly its
>: taste disappearing.  There is no more issur, period, it has been overwhelmed
>: by heter, and what is left is solely a permissible meat stew. Centrifuge is
>: therefore irrelevant.  The forbidden milk no more exists in Torah terms than
>: these microscopic bugs that we keep swallowing from the air and water and
>: food, they don't count.

And RMB replied:
> So, if you bring the milk back up to the top, visible be'ein, it can
> still be eaten with the rest of the chulent?

No, because if it is visible then the visible bit needs to be removed and if
it is taste able then if a non Jew would be able to taste it and any part
that has the taste of milk is assur because of ta'am k'ikar.  We use sixty
as our approximation either if a non Jew is not available (Shulchan Aruch
Yoreh Deah siman 98 si'if 1) or because we no longer have the custom to rely
on non Jews and therefore we use the mandated approximation (or we are
dealing with a case of min b'mino were the tastes are not distinguishable).
We do not get into the question of rov, whether before us or not, because
the taste detection test is so much more stringent.

> The possibility of unmixing the taaroves doesn't impact bitul, so why
> should the possibility of combining the odds of each mi'ut into a rov
> canceling its bitul?

I confess I have read this several times and I still don't understand what
this sentence means.  I don't think Chazal or our sources assumed the
possibility of a scenario where the taste of the milk could have gone into
the meat stew, and spread out sufficiently to become undetectable to a non
Jew, and then, using some sort of science, such as centrifuge, you could
bring the taste  back to a portion of the mixture.  Techiyas hamaysim of
taste, if you like.  Maybe it is a bit like the gelatine debate, ie whether
reconstituting it from bones, which are considered dust, means that it is
completely mutar, having gone through a mutar stage, or assur, given we know
that it originally came from a treif animal.  I certainly don't think though
that it is either straightforward, or that it has to do with the form of
probabilistic estimation we have to engage in when dealing with the other
types of cases.

>: But in the case of the three pieces of meat, there really genuinely is a
>: piece of treif meat in there that has not disappeared from existence, and
>: which everybody knows about...

> BTW, when it comes to safeiq, there is cheilev out there somewhere. And
> if you eat only one piece, you don't even know if you ate cheilev.

Yes.

> WRT taaroves, if it's well mixed, you know you definitely ate cheilev
> with your first bite. So if you want to say the two forms of bitul
> differ in kind, I could in theory argue that it's the bitul berov of a
> safeiq that is more "real". But I don't think they are. The rov of a
> safeiq is actually called
> a taaroves and bitul. For that matter, "isa -- lashon safeiq" (Rashi
> Kesuvos 14a) -- in general, a safeiq thought of as a kind of mixture.

I still don't see what this has to do with the subject under discussion.  We
started off by discussing the putative use of bitul in approved products.
Now I agree, as I acknowledged in my second post, I incorrectly  used the
term taarovos and bitul (albeit by implication) to refer to only one of a
host of different cases where these terms are used, namely the case where eg
a drop of milk falls into a meat stew.  The second time, however, I
corrected myself, and pointed out that while the case of the three pieces of
meat is indeed also a case of taarovos and bitul, and uses these terms, what
I meant when I distinguished between your case and the case being used in
approved products, to the extent used,  is a case just like the drop of milk
in the meat strew, the min b'aino mino, where the fundamental test is a
taste test, or an estimated taste test.   This is different from the other
taarovos where a form of rov becomes important.

You stated that in the case of approved products, have I found a situation
where people are not worried about timtum halev and the nine shops and a
piece of meat found, and my response was, this doesn't deal with that
question, because the bitul being used, at most, in approved products, is
almost certainly of the min b'aino mino Yoreh Deah siman 98 type (I am not
sure how much more precise I can get about it), and I don't think anybody
worries about timtum halev when the issur has been tasted out of existence.
It is not a question of rov at that point, or of safek.

> And both rely on rov as darshened from the same pasuq. (R' Chaim notes
> this, and that the original source "acharei rabim lehatos" is beis din,
> which is a taaroves of opinions.)

Yes once you are discussing the three pieces (or Yoreh Deah siman 109 case),
this is precisely the debate between the Rosh and the others regarding
whether the three pieces of meat, one of then known to be treif, can be
eaten by one person in one go or not.  The Rosh does hold that this is the
same kind of rov as Sanhedrin, and thus the conclusion is the same, the
taarovos gets turned, by fiat of the Torah, to mutar, hence no timtum halev
or anything of that nature.

Those who hold differently have to have a complicated relationship to  the
pasuk, because they end up with different conclusions in the case of
Sanhedrin and in the case of the three pieces.  In the case of the
Sanhedrin, you have a taarovos of opinions, and yet you can *kill* somebody
based upon that taarovos.  You completely and utterly ignore the minority in
order to act.  The Rosh says (at least in the case of achila, not tumah),
same thing for eating the meat, you completely and utterly ignore the
reality of the minority piece of meat.  Does the Sanhedrin end up with the
timtum status of murderers because they followed the majority and put
somebody to death?  What about the minority Judge, can he go round saying,
Oh well, I didn't vote to convict, so I am patur?  The answer is no, and
similarly the Rosh understands it this way here.

The others, the Rashba etc that you quote do not hold like the Rosh, either
they do not fundamentally rely on the pasuk acharei rabim lehatos (but that
seems difficult, because what other pasuk is there for rov - the one about
the different kinds of dam being mixed?), or else they have to understand
the pasuk to mandate one thing in the case in which it is brought, namely
Sanhedrin, and something different in other cases.    

> The Rashba, Toras haBayis 4:1, explains bitul
> berov in a taaroves in terms of kol deparish, meiruba parish, which is
> why he requires not eating the entire taaroves. Isn't it much like not
> eating all three pieces in the case of safeiq? But in any case, he
> invokes the safeiq kelal to explain the taaroves one.

> Bekhoros 23a gives a complex answer if bitul renders the minority of a
> taaroves keman deleisei dami. When touching a tamei item, since you are
> only touching at one point, we say keman deleisei. But when it comes to
> masah, since you are carrying the whole item, if part is tamei you are
> carrying the tamei within.

> Tosafos say that when earing, each bit is a mi'ut, and therefore even
> if you eat the majority of the taaroves, it's like touching the taaroves
> multiple times.

> The Rosh (Gid haNasheh, 37) says that if Tosafos's answer was right
> (not that he attributes the answer) one would have make sure that each bite
> might only be kosher food. He therefore distinguishes between kashrus
> and tum'ah instead. I didn't spend the time to follow what he wrote before
> replying, since that's off topic.

I disagree that that the Rosh is off topic, I think he is distinctly on
topic.  The Rosh is the one who feels that, the case of the three pieces in
front of us is the same as the Sanhedrin case, and the pasuk mandates a
certain response. This means that we have a different response here to the
one we would normally have when dealing with a safek.  The Rashba and others
apply different halacha, which ends up being about probability, whether
Chazal would have used that terminology or not (I am not sure why you think
they would not) and forbid.

Note however even according to the Rashba, you are permitted l'chatchila to
add enough pieces of mutar meat to take the group to sixty against the
issur, and *then* you can cook them  and eat them altogether.  So once you
get to sixty, he is not concerned either about timtum halev.

Note incidentally that it is not strictly speaking true that the Rashba (or
the halacha) applies the normal safek klal.  The normal safek klal is that
of safek d'orisa l'chumra.  That would lead us to not eating any of the
three pieces, as each piece is a safek d'orisa.  Similarly a piece of meat
found in the streets where there are eight kosher butchers and one non
kosher, it is still a safek.  Kol deparish, meruba parish is a derogation, a
leniency, from the normal safek d'orisa l'chumra stance.  However assuming
kol d'parish meruba parish is, as the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah siman 110
si'if 3) states a din torah and if you hold, as the majority rishonic
position seems to be, that the whole rule of safek d'orisa l'chumra is in
itself a rabbinic rule, then presumably you would say that they did not
apply safek d'orisa l'chumra where the Torah already gave a rule of dealing
with it (and perhaps why they moved to be more machmir in the case of the
nine shops, and in fact rabbinically banned such a piece of meat anyway (see
the end of si'if 3 there ), and I guess if you do hold safek d'orisa
l'chumra is d'orisa, maybe just as ruba wins over karov, even though that is
a d'orisa, it wins over safek d'orisa l'chumra too).

Given how long this post is, I am going to separate off the discussion of
approved products into another post.

Regards
Chana