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

Torah Lecture

Mishnah Bechorot 6-10

Lectured by Rabbi Joseph Dana

Published
January 6, 2026
Duration
2:03
Lecture code
RJD-MBECHOROT-6-10

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.

If there's a wart on the eye of a Bechor (firstborn animal) and a hair growing from it, even if it's on the white part of the eye, we said earlier that a blemish on the white part of an eye does not disqualify a Bechor. Here, we're going to say that a wart is different because it's very ugly. Or a piece of the bones of its front or back leg are missing. So here, it's a missing piece of the bone. It's clearly visible. Or there's a crack in the jawbone, the bone that holds the teeth. One of the eyes is bigger than normal, or one of them is smaller than normal. In all of these cases, the Bechor is disqualified.

If one ear is big and the other ear is small, and you can see by looking at the animal that the ears are different sizes, the animal would be disqualified. That is an obvious blemish. But it's not disqualified if the difference between the two is so small that it could only be determined by measuring them. A Bechor, says Rabbi Yehuda, is also disqualified if one of its Beitzim (testicles) in the reproductive area is twice as large as the other one. In this case, Chachamim (Sages) did not agree with him that this is a blemish that disqualifies a Bechor, but only up to a certain size. If the second Beitzah (testicle) is much smaller, if there's a real major difference between the two, then the Bechor would be disqualified. So Chachamim even agreed to a point. When one is just bigger—twice as big as the other—they would not agree. But if it's bigger than that, then they would agree.