Q&A: Salting the Meat of Sacrifices
Salting the Meat of Sacrifices
Question
In Maimonides, Sabbath 11:5, he rules that there is no tanning (and salting) with regard to foods. The Mishneh LaMelekh there raised a difficulty from a baraita in Menachot that brings a derivation to permit salting the meat of sacrifices. If there is no tanning in meat, why is there any need for a derivation? There he cited the Shitah Mekubetzet to answer that by doing so one renders the sacrifice fit, and therefore there is tanning involved here. It seems his intent is that salting meat is not tanning because it does not create anything new by means of it (it only adds flavor), whereas salting the sacrifice newly effects the sacrifice’s state of fitness for the altar.
Maharam Schick? No—Maharshal? Actually, the Maharshal? In any case, the Maharshal of Berezan raised a difficulty with this answer from Maimonides’ ruling that the sacrifice is valid after the fact even without salting.
Based on your important and well-known article on halakhic statuses, and also based on the example you often use of the status of a sukkah as part of its very objecthood (the reasoning of Kovetz Shiurim), I was wondering whether one could say that fulfilling the salting requirement in itself repairs and renews something in the object, because there is a metaphysical difference between a sacrifice that was salted and one that was not salted.
Does the Rabbi agree?
[One more point I’d be glad to know: when you speak about these halakhic entities, are you describing the Sages’ view, or also your own? Do you too assume that these statuses are metaphysical entities?]
Answer
Why should this depend on what I say? Even if there is no metaphysical reality, one can still say that the salting renders the sacrifice fit. And even if after the fact it is valid without it, it still renders it fit ab initio.
As for my own view, that is a good question. I am not sure. I do believe in the existence of ideas, but the halakhic status of a specific woman is not an idea. In any case, if that is the halakhic conception, then one must conduct oneself as though it is correct.
Discussion on Answer
Are you setting one man against another?
[I’ve been told a few times—I don’t know how true and/or fair it is—that the geniuses of Galicia bring a proof for every idea, but their proofs do not always hit the mark. So I was “surprised,” to myself, how the Maharshal could argue that improving something from ab initio to after-the-fact status (in a Torah-level law) is not considered a repair without bringing proof. But when you search, it turns out he really does bring a proof (from the Ran), and on its face it is a good proof. Though perhaps one could distinguish between binding the lulav, which is just an ancillary matter because of “This is my God and I will glorify Him,” so there is no “repair” of the lulav here, and salting a sacrifice, which is a commandment in the sacrifice itself and is therefore considered a repair. ]
Indeed, my intent was to the words of the Maharshal quoted here (by Y.S., and I did not understand what the Rabbi meant by writing “Are you setting one man against another?”).
My basic assumption (and apparently also the Maharshal’s) was that the law that salting is not indispensable teaches that salting is not a law in the sacrifice, but a law in the one offering it.
The Rabbi wrote to me: “And even if after the fact it is valid without it, it still renders it fit ab initio.” That is, the Rabbi understands that salting is a law in the sacrifice, only it is not indispensable in it. That is an excellent solution, but I would be glad for another example of a law in the object that is not indispensable.
[What I was trying to do was solve the problem without changing the assumption that salting is not a law in the sacrifice.]
You are explaining Maimonides, so what is there to ask from the Ran?
There is no shortage of examples of a law in the object that is not indispensable. There are laws of the sukkah that are not indispensable (placing the roofing before the walls). Even binding the lulav that was mentioned here. With sacred offerings, we require that the verse repeat it in order to make it indispensable, and it is not reasonable that everything there is a law in the person.
Of course, you can decide that anything not indispensable is not a law in the object, but then by definition there will be no counterexample.
Thank you very much.
[The Ran comments on the Rif, who wrote that since according to Jewish law a lulav does not require binding, then if one did not bind it, he may bind it on a festival. And usually one needs a good reason to multiply disputes between the Rif and Maimonides (especially since the initial question about salting also has other answers). But in my humble opinion, as stated, it is easy to distinguish between “This is my God and I will glorify Him” regarding the lulav ab initio, where this is not a repair, and the commandment of salting the sacrifice ab initio, where it is a repair.]
(I used the name Y.S., derived from a verse, etc., and sorry for the mix-up.)
[In Otzar HaChokhmah, search for “tanning with foods” in Schwadron’s books.]
In the book Ein HaRo’im by the Maharshal and his son, p. 151, letter 20, it says as follows: “He noted on this that according to what the Ran wrote in chapter 3 of Sukkah, if a lulav does not require binding, then it is not considered repairing when one binds it, since it is not indispensable. But in Maimonides, chapter 5 of the laws of the forbidden altar-offerings, it is explained that salting is not indispensable after the fact; if so, there is no issue here of repairing.”