What do you think about the fact that this fish contradicts the statement that anything with scales has fins? It contradicts it not only scientifically but also the Torah’s own definition itself. If we’re talking about scales, the condition is that they can be removed by hand, say—and they can be. And if we’re talking about fins, then even if some argue that it had them at the beginning, according to the Torah the definition of a fin is that the fin is permanent and used for swimming, and here it falls off…
And also, they say that if such a fish is found then all of Judaism collapses, so what do you think? (To me it seems ridiculous in general to base the whole religion on something like this.)

The Torah says fins and scales = kosher; if one is missing, not kosher.
Which implies that such a reality could exist.

How can anyone base the Torah on this?
After all, the Torah does not say that there isn’t, or won’t be found, such a thing.

It’s like putting me to a test of whether I’m telling the truth by checking whether I’m an infantry rifleman level 03,
but that’s not a test, since I never claimed to be an infantry rifleman level 03.

Granted, in the words of the Sages there are all sorts of statements about this…
but they said what they said based on what seemed to them according to the information they had in hand.
They themselves also made mistakes and were not expert even in verses of the Torah itself (Bava Batra 113a, Tosafot s.v. “tarvaihu”), and they can err about reality, and the sages of the nations are sometimes more correct than they are—according to the Talmud itself.
So this is not some huge question about the Torah, which never said at all that a fin will not be found without scales…

“So this is not some huge question about the Torah, which never said at all that a fin will not be found without scales…”—
Not a fin without scales.
It said that anything with scales has fins, and they found a fish with scales without fins. So fine, maybe they were mistaken, but I heard in many places that if such a fish were found, Judaism would collapse / be false / or however you want to phrase it—there are all kinds of versions.

Where does the Torah say what you heard—that without this Judaism would collapse?
It isn’t written in the Torah.
So what do you want from the Torah?

It said that anything with fins and scales is kosher.
It did not say that anything with scales necessarily has fins…
Take it up with whoever says that,
not with the Torah, which never said it.

The truth is, I’ve heard this from all kinds of unrelated places, from various rabbis I’m not going to start naming, from acquaintances—that’s why I asked, to know whether those statements are actually true, or maybe not.

But yes, it is written that anything with scales also has fins, and they found a fish with scales and without fins, and that is a contradiction, so I wanted to understand it. Although again, if this contradiction doesn’t really mean much and we sum it up by saying maybe they made a mistake and that’s it, then fine.

Okay, it just sounds like a kind of rule—”anything with scales has fins”—but maybe it can be interpreted in a way that doesn’t obligate there to be fins. It’s just that there’s also this condition that if such a fish is found, Judaism collapses. Maybe all of this is just noise and chatter and not statements from the Torah itself. In any case, I wanted to understand all this, thanks.

Ms. A,
in the Torah it is not written.

First of all, it’s not “Mr.”—it’s Ms., Mr. B. And second, I checked and it’s written in the Mishnah, a statement of the Sages. I also called it Torah for purposes of the distinction between Torah in general and science, but if that’s important to the matter itself (because the Torah is more important than the Mishnah), I accept the correction. I already wrote that maybe they were mistaken (meaning the Sages).

In discussions like these I find that the definitions of what’s important and what’s not important change from person to person. For one person it’s important that there not be any contradiction, so he insists that the fish does not contradict this sentence. For someone else, like Mr. B, what’s important is that it’s not written in the Torah at all, so even if there is a contradiction it’s irrelevant. Some say that it is relevant and base the whole Torah on it, with the condition that if such a fish is found, etc. It all became one big muddle for me, so I dropped out… Let’s sum up by saying maybe they were wrong, maybe not, and it changes nothing, and that’s it.

It seems to me that the rabbi of this holy forum really makes extensive use of the expression
that the Sages can make mistakes, and makes extensive use of those possibilities.

By the way, they themselves said this in the Talmud—that they err in knowledge of reality.
So who can even claim that they did not make a mistake?

I don’t know, I’m with you—it could be they were mistaken. It’s just that everyone says something different; I only wanted to understand… Why did they even say that such a fish would not be found, and on top of that base the whole Torah on it? And it’s not just random people; sometimes it’s rabbis and religious people. Why spread incorrect things? It just creates confusion (or maybe it’s true and someone here is mistaken…). In short, there’s no point in a discussion where everyone interprets things however they want—not to mention that some see this as proof that the Torah is not true at all. It’s a dialogue of the deaf, as far as I’m concerned.

With God’s help, 13 Iyar 5784

See Peninei Halakha in the chapter on fish: one fin is sufficient, and it is also enough if the fin or the scales are present on the fish during a certain period of its life.

The name “Monopterus” was given to it because of the small fin under its tail, and besides that, at birth it has two pectoral fins that fall off within 10 days. דווקא its scales, which are strongly attached to its skin and do not peel off easily, raise the problem of whether they can be defined halakhically as “scales.”

If so, “Monopterus” as well joins the 30,000 known species of fish, in all of which the rule holds: “Anything that has scales has fins,” and no “exception” to this rule has been found.

Best regards, Fish”l

Even if an “exception” had been found, there would be no difficulty in cuchia, for the rule was given as practical guidance for what to do when one finds a cut-up unidentified fish, and in places where Jews lived in the days of the Sages there was no concern that a fisherman would come across Monopterus cuchia or anything similar. But the “difficulty” does not exist in the first place—its fins are considered fins, and it is דווקא its scales that are doubtful…