Camel meat

“But the following, which bring up the cud or have true hoofs that are cleft through, you may not eat: the camel, the hare, and the hyrax — for although they bring up the cud, they have no true hoofs — they are unclean for you; also the swine — for although it has true hoofs, it does not bring up the cud — is unclean for you. You shall not eat of their flesh” (Deuteronomy 14).

According to this count, there are only four animals; Chazal added a fifth, theshesuah. “Rav Chanan the son of Rava said: The shesuah is a distinct creature which has two backs and two spinal columns. But was Moses a hunter or trapper? This is a response to the one that says the Torah is not from Heaven” (Hulin 60b).

On the matter of the shesuah, an animal which never did exist, it is enough to mention the words of Rav in Niddah 24a, “Rav said, ‘there never was such a creature'” and the halachic ruling of the Shach in Yoreh Deah, section 13, subsection 21: “Since G-d taught Moses  that the shesuah is forbidden, it must mean a shesuah in its mother’s womb, for it would survive but an hour after it comes out to the light of the world.”

That is, the shesuah is not a certain animal species, but it is the term which denotes a rare defect which would cause the death of a newborn animal; there is no proof from this that the Torah is from the Heavens, only an imaginary situation to captivate fools. (Though there is a great deal more that can be said on this issue, we will leave it at this so that you may see how Chazal took the Scripture out of its plain context and distorted it, invented theshesuah and made it into an animal unto itself, and even used this as proof that the Torah is from the Heavens. What is the point of this? They create animals with their words, bring them as proofs about the Divine origin of the Torah and then contradict that.)

Now we will look at the issues involved with the other four animals: (about the hyrax and the hare, which are not ruminants, we have already written extensively in Pamphlet 3, and there we proved that the error did not originate with the Shechinah which dictated the Torah, but with the transcriber). We will begin with the camel: “The camel, for it chews its cud and does not have true split hoofs, is impure for you.” Rashi on Leviticus 11:26: “‘Which split the hoof but is not cloven-footed’ — such as a camel, the hoof of which is parted above but below it is joined.” Rashi’s words are puzzling, for the camel’s split hooves are parted above and below (the camel is counted among the cloven-footed by zoological classification). See the Daat Zekenim, one of the authors of the Tosfot, on Leviticus 11:3, “Rashi maintains that the camel’s hooves are split above and joined below, and this requires study, for if so, he should have removed the camel from the class of the cloven hoofed and written ‘its hooves are not cloven'” (which the Torah did not write about the camel; it only wrote, ‘and does not have true split hoofs’), just as we said.

We find that according to Rashi the camel is kosher, for it splits its hooves and has cloven hooves above and below, and chews its cud.Therefore you should say that the Torah did not call the camel “split hoofed” since it walks on the pads of its feet and not on the edge of the split like the goat and the sheep. But the factual truth is that the camel is truly cloven hoofed.

One of the ways to identify a ruminant is the lack of teeth in the upper jaw (we will preface our remarks and state that there are four types of teeth: incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. Most animals have these in their upper and lower jaws, but most ruminants do not have incisors and do not have canines in their upper jaws). Therefore Chazal determined a rule in Hulin 59a, “If it has no teeth above, it is known to be pure; otherwise it is known to be impure.”

But Chazal, who noticed the difference with the camel, asked, “But a camel is a ruminant and has no upper teeth, yet it is impure? The camel has canines.” Rashi explains: “Canines–it has two teeth in its upper jaw, one on this side and one on that.” We learn from his words that the camel’s upper jaw has two canines and no incisors at all. It is clear that Rashi never saw a camel, for he is in error. The camel has two incisors and two canines in the upper jaw, for a total of four teeth. Another thing you should know is that bucks generally have incisors in their upper jaw and they are ruminants and have cloven hooves; they are kosher and pure. So Chazal erred even in the matter of teeth, and their rule is no rule at all.

Dental formulae for behemahs and chayahs:

On that same matter the Gemara (59a) rules, “One who walks in a desert and finds an animal whose hooves are cut should look at its mouth: if it has incisors in its upper jaw – it is clear that the animal is pure, and if they does not – it is clear that the animal is impure, provided that one is familiar with the camel. But does the camel have incisors? As long as he recognizes a young camel. Yet is it possible that there is the young camel and there is also another species which is like a young camel? No, this is implausible, as R’ Ishmael said: ‘And the camel, for it is ruminant’ (Leviticus 11:4) — He who rules His world knows that there is no ruminant which is impure aside from the camel.”

One who walks and sees a young llama or guanaco whose legs are cut off would permit it, for it does not resemble a young camel. It seems that Chazal meant “one who walks in the area of Israel.”

Come see how many difficulties and mistakes are in this one short passage. First, if one found a buck (and did not recognize it) and saw it has teeth in the upper jaw, he would render it impure for no reason, for it is pure.

Second, the camel is not unique in His world. There are other animals which are ruminants and have teeth as does the camel: the llama, the guanaco, the alpaca, and the vicuna. Therefore one must recognize the young of these animals as well (and know that these animals do not look, externally, like the camel).

One who is walking and finds an aardvark whose legs are cut off would permit it, for it has no teeth in its upper jaw. We see that He who rules His world only knows the animals in the area of Israel.

Third, there are animals which do not have teeth in their upper jaws and they are impure, like the aardvark which has cloven hooves and has no incisors or canines at all. So a person walking in southern Africa and seeing an aardvark with its hooves cut off would check the upper jaw and see that there were no incisors or canines and would permit it and eat what is forbidden.

From all of this you can learn something important: Chazal did not check and did not understand at all that rumination stems from the unique build of the animals’ digestive system. Ruminants have several stomachs. Cattle and sheep have four stomachs (the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum) and the camel has three (missing the omasum). This is the absolute sign which characterizes all ruminants. Since Chazal did not check the digestive tract, we see that they did not know that there is a connection between the two, for according to this sign we would not permit the ardvark nor forbid the buck. Therefore we cannot rely on the signs which our Sages gave us — just as we find on the issue of signs of fish in the Tosfot on Avodah Zara 40, s.v. amar Rabba, we should not rely on signs about fish roe given by Chazal (that one side of the grain of roe is round and the other pointed), and they even brought a passage from the Yerushalmi that one should not rely upon this sign: “Nathan the son of Rabba said before Samuel, ‘I know to tell the difference between the fetuses of impure fish and the fetuses of pure fish. The fetuses of impure fish are round and the fetuses of pure fish are long.’ He showed him a fetus of a pure fish and asked ‘What is this?’ He answered, ‘impure.’ He told him, ‘It is bad enough you have called something pure impure, but in the end you will call something impure pure’.”

This is proof that Chazal themselves felt one should not rely upon the signs they gave, and the same holds true for us, who are expert about many animals and animal anatomy and who find many contradictions in the words of Chazal. Therefore we should not rely upon the signs, and the whole issue of one who is walking in the desert falls by the wayside in any case. We have already cited the words of the Chazon Ish on Yoreh Deah, “One should not breach the customs of Israel and we have no need for that; it is enough for us the sheep and the cattle on which we have a tradition.” When the system of signs falls by the wayside it is best to take shelter in the small amount of certainty which is left.