Chullin 117-123: Human Skin, Tum’ah, and Use
by R. Gidon Rothstein
When I was in yeshiva, oh so many years ago, rumor had it that mori ve-rabi R. Amital zt”l, one of the heads of the yeshiva, was asked the source of the prohibition of cannibalism, and answered it needed no verse or text, no right-thinking person would eat human flesh. [I wasn’t there, so I’m not saying he said this, nor what else he might have said. I’m using it to lead into the sugya that struck me for this week.] Our respect for human bodies underlies this week’s sugya, but will also challenge it when there seem to be important uses for such bodies.
We start with a Mishna on Chullin 122a, a list of skins/hides with the same legal status as the flesh of whatever animal it came from, in communicating tum’ah, the status excluding items from Temple-related use. It starts with human skin and, later, points out that other skins lose tum’ah status if tanned into leather, or had been used for long enough to be as if they were tanned (such as by having been made into a floor mat).
Not human skin.
Biblical or Not
The Gemara has two possible understandings of Ulla’s declaring this a rabbinic rule. In the first, he said it about the basic law, the tum’ah of human skin is rabbinic, ordained lest people make their parents’ skins into rugs.
[Rashi in Niddah 55a thinks the worry was that people would make the skin into a saddlecloth for a donkey; Ramban in our Gemara disagrees, because then there would be no reason to speak of parents. Instead, he says it starts out with people keeping their parents’ skins, hung somewhere, to honor and remember them. After time, the identity of the skin will be lost or forgotten, and others will make them into rugs or saddlecloths.
Just for an interesting historical note, when Ritva to Niddah quotes this idea, he credits his teacher R. Aharon Ha-Levi, author of Bedek ha-Bayit, glosses on Rashba’s Torat Ha-Bayit. We often think Ritva a student of Rashba, but he was more a student of this Ra’ah, who likely was not the author of Sefer Ha-Chinuch].
Human Skin Is Different
Rashi suggests this rabbinic because skin isn’t flesh, isn’t considered part of the deceased. [Based on other examples in the Mishnah, I think he means human skin is always distinct from the meat of a person, in contrast to animals where soft skin is sometimes cooked and consumed with the meat.]
Tosafot finds a more explicit reason in Niddah 55a, skin is not like bones (the Biblically named source of tum’ah), because skin regenerates.
Or, getting back to Ulla, he said it about the second part of the Mishnah, tanning or working human skin does not free it of tum’ah, as it does for the other skins mentioned in the Mishnah. For this rendering, Ulla agrees the basic tum’ah comes from the Torah. This alternate view was explained in Niddah, too, since skin scars when it is cut off, it is like bones and would create tum’ah.
Aruch HaShulchan, Laws of the Tum’ah of the Deceased 9;8 seems to think both sides accept the facts of skin’s eventual complete regeneration, are arguing about whether the time it takes for it to do it, and the leftover scarring, means it is like bones.
Who Turns Parents Into…
Tosafot wonders why we have to worry, when we are not allowed to benefit from any human corpse. In Chullin, Tosafot thinks the Gemara referred to parents because of the extra wrong in the dishonor of doing this to parents. In Niddah, Tosafot made another significant point, the Rabbis who declared it tamei to stop people from using what were already prohibited remains knew that people back then were more careful about tum’ah than other prohibitions.
Ramban attributes this extra care to the reaction of other people. People do not always disassociate from someone they know to violate the Torah, but they do stay away from someone who might convey the status of tum’ah. Tosafot spotted a disconnect in people’s observance, their greater care with tum’ah than prohibitions, where Ramban found the key in people’s wish to avoid being ostracized.
The Primary Context, Theoretical
I intend this series to be of interest also to those not studying Daf Yomi; the point is to find topics with impact on all of us, often practical. although I myself live almost entirely in theory. Here, aside of reminding me of the charms of R. Amital’s approach to halachah and a well-lived life, Aruch HaShulchan codifies our laws in two places, and I also found responsa where this issue plays a role.
Aruch HaShulchan He-Atid, his codification of laws not yet observed [such as those to do with the Temple; as I reference it, I always pause to note his heroic attempt to codify all of halachah. He would have been the first since Rambam, who was the first since the Mishnah. He didn’t quite make it, but the ambition is breathtaking, since halachic literature had greatly expanded from Rambam’s time].
His Laws of the Tum’ah of the Deceased 9;7 notes that Rambam accepted the second view, meaning the skin does convey tum’ah by Torah law, but if tanned or worked into something else would only do so by Rabbinic law, to stop us from getting used to tanning human skin. [Note the change from the Gemara; he has left out the issue of parents and rugs, turned it more general, teaching us not to use human skin.]
In Yoreh De’ah 349;2 he points out that no major codifier, not Rambam, Tur, and Shulchan Aruch, considered human skin to be mutar be-hana’ah, permitted to derive benefit, despite sources that might suggest the contrary. Since Tosafot themselves were split on the issue, Aruch HaShulchan is sure we follow Rambam and those who agree with him.
Which has practical ramifications in our world today, as we will see.
Transplanting
R. Moshe Feinstein,Iggerot Moshe Yoreh De’ah1;230, was asked about a kohen who needed to have a transplant from someone who had passed away, bone, flesh, or tissue. Among his proofs to allow it, in section eight of the responsum he argues that when something is no longer considered part of the deceased, the tum’ah goes away, because even the second version of Ulla, where the original skin was tamei de-oraita, agreed that tanning removed that status, at a Torah level.
The issue arises for corneal transplants, which often used the corneas of people who have passed away. R. Ben Tzion Abba Shaul, rosh yeshiva of Porat Yosef and a contemporary of R. Ovadya Yosef’s, had sent his friend a responsum he had written, where he thought only non-Jewish corneas could be used, because it’s a misuse of the deceased, primarily, but also because if Chazal instituted tum’ah to prevent our using corpses, that would seem to include these kinds of uses.
R. Yosef printed this letter inYabi’a Omer3 Yoreh De’ah 20. Two days later, 20 Tevet 5719 (1959), the next responsum, he disagreed, including, for our topic, the certainty that while Chazal looked to prevent the misuse of corpses, giving sight is certainly worthy enough to be confident they would have allowed it.
Pacemakers and Skin Grafts
In Yabi’a Omer 10, Yoreh De’ah 50, he turned his attention to reusing pacemakers. Expensive tech (then, and still today in poorer countries), it brought up the question of gaining benefit from those who have passed away. While Minchat Yitzchak ruled against it, R. Yosef himself agreed with the “three shepherds,” R. Moshe Feinstein, R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and R. Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg (Tzitz Eliezer), all of whom allowed it.
To finish closest to where we started, Chashukei Chemed to this Daf (Chullin 122a), discussed a skin graft for a burn victim, where the closer the genetic match the more likely the graft will take, giving reason to wonder about taking a graft from one’s deceased father.
He knows the Ritva we saw above, making rugs or saddlecloths seems crazy, except he also know a responsum of Radvaz, 1;262, who thought they did it for sorcery purposes, was thought to help in battle, and the closer the relative, the more effective.
The case at hand was where the burn victim was in mortal danger without the graft, easing R. Zilberstein’s path, first, because we permit almost everything to save Jewish lives, and—he says—the father would clearly want his son’s life saved, would certainly forgive this use of his remains. But he is not quite positive his logic is right.
Leaving us with a sugya starting and ending with human skin, Biblically or rabbinically a source of tum’ah, rabbinically certainly still a source of tum’ah even after changing it. Carrying over into questions of when it is reasonable or appropriate to benefit from human remains, given the baseline prohibition against doing so.