Talmud - Hullin 99a חולין צ״ט א׳

The Gemara objects: Let us learn from the case of the nazirite’s ram that the flavor of sacrificial food can be nullified. The Gemara explains: The Merciful One revealed in the Torah with regard to the sin offering: “Whatever shall touch its flesh shall be holy” (Leviticus 6:20). This teaches that the halakhic status of any food that touches and absorbs flavor from a sin offering becomes like it, so that if the sin offering is disqualified, this food shall also be disqualified, and if the sin offering is valid, this food may be eaten in accordance with the stringencies that apply to a sin offering.

The Gemara asks: And what did you see to indicate that we learn the principle of nullification concerning sacrificial food from that verse of the sin offering? Derive it instead from this verse concerning the foreleg of the nazirite’s ram. The Gemara answers: This case of the nazirite’s ram is a novelty, and we do not learn principles from a novelty.

The Gemara objects: If so, if the case of the nazirite’s ram is not a viable precedent for general halakhic principles, then one should also not learn from that case that when forbidden food is mixed with permitted food of a different type, it is nullified in either one hundred or sixty times its own volume. As discussed above, the two opinions in this regard are both based on the case of the nazirite’s ram. The Gemara responds: Is that to say that we learn that forbidden food is nullified in sixty or one hundred times its volume of permitted food as a leniency? We learn it only as a stringency, as if it were not for this derivation, one would say that by Torah law forbidden food is nullified in a mixture in which there is a simple majority of permitted food.

Ravina said an alternative explanation of the term: This is, that appears in the baraita with regard to the nazirite’s ram. This limitation is necessary only for the place where the foreleg is cut from the body of the ram, as it was said that in a case where permitted and forbidden foods were attached and one cut the forbidden section from the permitted section, the place of the cut on the permitted part is generally forbidden. But here, in the case of the nazirite’s ram, it is permitted.

§ The Gemara returns to discussing the statement of Rabbi Shmuel bar Rav Yitzḥak (98a) that forbidden food is nullified in a mixture only if there is one hundred times its volume of permitted food. Rav Dimi sat and said this halakha.

Abaye said to him: And is it true that all the forbidden foods in the Torah that are mixed with permitted foods are nullified only in a mixture containing one hundred times their volume of permitted food? But didn’t we learn in a mishna (Orla 2:6): Why did the Sages say that with regard to anyone who leavens non-sacred food with a leavening agent that is teruma or flavors it with spices of teruma or mixes teruma into non-sacred food, thereby making the food forbidden for non-priests, the halakha is to be stringent if he mixed one type of food that is teruma with non-sacred food of the same type. But the halakha is to be lenient and to be stringent if he mixed one type of teruma with non-sacred food of a different type.

And it is taught in the latter clause, i.e., in the following mishna (Orla 2:7): When it is stated that the halakha is to be lenient and to be stringent if he mixed one type of teruma with non-sacred food not of its type, how is this accomplished? For example, in a case of split beans of teruma that were cooked with non-sacred lentils, if there are enough split beans relative to the lentils to impart flavor to the lentils, then regardless of whether there are enough lentils to neutralize the split beans in one hundred and one times their volume, i.e., the volume of the lentils is one hundred and one times the volume of the split beans, or whether there are not enough lentils to neutralize the split beans in one hundred and one times their volume, the entire mixture is forbidden to a non-priest.

Conversely, if there are not enough split beans of teruma to impart flavor to the lentils, then regardless of whether there are enough lentils to neutralize the split beans in one hundred and one times their volume, or whether there are not enough lentils to neutralize the split beans in one hundred and one times their volume, the mixture is permitted even to a non-priest.

Abaye commented: When the mishna says that there are not enough lentils to neutralize the split beans in one hundred and one times their volume, and nevertheless if the split beans did not impart flavor to the lentils, the mixture is permitted, in what amount of lentils are the split beans nullified? Is it not that the split beans are permitted because they are mixed with sixty times their volume of non-sacred lentils? This contradicts the opinion of Rabbi Shmuel bar Rav Yitzḥak.

Traduction : The William Davidson digital edition of the Koren Noé Talmud, with commentary by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz.

Chullin 99a explores whether sacrificial food flavor can be nullified, using the nazirite ram case to derive rules on mixtures of forbidden and permitted food.