18 Months With Herdsmen: How Rav Learned To Spot A Blemish

A Kohen who wants to clear the restrictions on a firstborn animal has to wait for an accident.

The Talmud treats the blemish question as a matter of intent. A blemish must be both accidental and permanent to lift the sanctified status from the animal. A cut lip or a slit ear disqualifies the animal as a korban, but only if it happens on its own. If the Kohen engineers the injury, even indirectly, the rabbis impose a penalty: the animal stays permanently prohibited, and the Kohen may not slaughter it or take any benefit from it. To police that line, the rabbis created the role of mumcheh bechorot, an expert who alone decides whether a claimed blemish qualifies. The Kohen must bring the matter before that expert. No other path exists.

The title demands years of study in Halacha and veterinary medicine. The Talmud records that Rav spent 18 months among herdsmen to learn which blemishes last and which heal over time. Today, no one holds that knowledge beyond obvious cases such as a missing limb. Because the laws of bechor remain in force, a Kohen holding a bechor beheima tehora can do little but keep the animal until a blemish arises without human help. The rabbis devised a workaround: before the first birth, part ownership in the mother is sold to a non-Jew. Only the firstborn of an animal owned solely by a Jew enters the world sanctified, so a partially non-Jewish-owned mother produces a calf free for secular use.

The dispute over who pays is older than the animals themselves. The Talmud laments that later generations sought ways to avoid paying taxes while their predecessors sought ways to pay them. Tithes, known as Terumot and ma'asrot, attach to crops delivered through the main entrance of the storehouse, not through a skylight. Earlier generations carried their crops through the main door and paid the tithes that delivery triggered. Later generations routed them through the skylight and paid nothing. The rabbis ruled the arrangement legal and criticized those who used it.

Other schemes drew a harder line. Tax shelters built by national accounting firms and blessed by law firms have been struck down by tax authorities. The only reliable test of whether a tax maneuver is avoidance or evasion is what a court decides afterward, Raphael Grunfeld writes.

Raphael Grunfeld is a partner at the Wall Street law firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP. He received Semichah in Yoreh Yoreh from Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem of America and in Yadin Yadin from Harav HaGa'on Dovid Feinstein, Zt"l. This piece is drawn from his book "Ner Eyal: A Guide to Seder Nashim, Nezikin, Kodashim, Taharot and Zerai'm."