A Yissachar / Zebulun Partnership in Loving Memory of Yishak ben Simcha A"H & Felicia bat Miriam A"H
Rabbi Joseph Dana

Torah Lecture

Mishnah Avodah Zarah 5-9

Lectured by Rabbi Joseph Dana

Published
May 11, 2025
Duration
2:48
Lecture code
RJD-MAVDZRA-5-9

This transcript was auto-generated and polished for readability. While we aim for accuracy, errors may occur. If you notice a mistake, please click to submit corrections.

Even a small amount mixed into a permissible type of liquid would prohibit the entire liquid. Any amount is a problem. We’ll learn about other items that forbid in the same way, regardless of the amount. These items are prohibited for benefit, and they also prohibit the items with which they become mixed. Even if only a small amount is mixed in, so that only a tiny percentage of the mixture is this prohibited item, the whole thing becomes a problem.

Wine that was used for a libation. An idol. If a statue that was worshipped became lost among other permitted statues, all of them become problematic. Animal skins with the heart opening. As we said at the beginning of the Masechet (tractate), this shows that it was used for Avodah Zarah (idolatry) purposes. They would kill an animal, or they would cut open its chest while it was alive, kill it, and rip its heart out. An ox that killed somebody and was sentenced to be stoned—sentenced to death. It is not allowed to benefit from any of these.

An Eglah Arufah is the ceremony when a person was murdered and they don’t know who the killer was. They go to the nearest town and go through the procedure of the Eglah Arufah, where they behead a calf in a valley and declare that they didn’t have any responsibility for the murder. It is also not allowed to benefit from this. When a person with Tzara'at, leprosy, is trying to purify himself, he has to bring two different birds. One of them is slaughtered, and the other one is eventually set free. It is not allowed to benefit from the slaughtered bird.

The hair of a Nazir, someone who accepts upon himself Nezirut (Nazirite vow), is forbidden to benefit from when he eventually shaves it at the end of his Nezirut. A firstborn male donkey has to be redeemed by giving a Kohen (priest) a sheep or a goat. Until that time, it hasn’t been redeemed and it is forbidden to benefit from. Meat cooked with milk. The goat that is sent to Azazel, thrown off the mountain on Yom Kippur. Regular, unconsecrated, unholy meat that was slaughtered on the Temple Mount in the Temple courtyard becomes prohibited to benefit from.

Harei eilu asurin ve'osrin bechol shehen. Not allowed to benefit, not allowed—they’re prohibited, not allowed to benefit from them, and they prohibit anything that they mix with, even in the smallest amount. If a small amount of one of these items is mixed in with something permitted, the entire mixture becomes problematic and prohibited to benefit from.