We have no nervousness. In the last Mishnah, we had the disagreement between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel over whether an egg that was laid on Yom Tov (festival day) was allowed to be eaten. Beit Shammai was lenient, while Beit Hillel was strict. Here we'll apply that to other things. The Mishnah says that if an animal was born on Yom Tov, and that Yom Tov fell out on a Sunday, everybody—both Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—would agree that you're allowed to eat it that day. Beit Hillel prohibited an egg that was laid on a Sunday that was Yom Tov because the Sunday followed the Shabbat, and when it comes to a Beitzah (egg), there is a preparation the day before. So technically, this egg was prepared on Shabbat for Yom Tov, which is a problem. But an animal, where there's no preparation, if it's born on that day, it wasn't prepared from yesterday; therefore, everybody would say that it's permissible to eat it on that Yom Tov that falls out on a Sunday. But if a chick comes from an egg on Yom Tov, everybody agrees that it's not allowed to be eaten on that day. The idea here is that even Beit Shammai, who allow a newly laid egg, would agree that a newly hatched chick is a problem. And this really has nothing to do with Yom Tov. It really has to do with the status of a newly hatched chick. Every day of the year, it's considered to be a sheretz, a creeping creature, like a little insect. The Torah forbids eating the chick until it opens its eyes, until its eyes are visible. So this is just a general law. The Torah forbids eating a chick until it's a little bit more developed.
We'll now have the machloket (dispute) between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, where Beit Shammai continues to be more lenient than Beit Hillel. The first one will be about kisui hadam, covering up the blood. If a person slaughters a chaya (non-domestic animal) or a bird, they're obligated to do kisui hadam. They're obligated to cover the blood with dirt, sand, or something else. So if somebody wants to slaughter an animal or a bird on Yom Tov, they have to do kisui hadam. There could be some halachic issues with kisui hadam. A person could be digging up dirt from the ground; that's choresh, that's plowing. He could be taking earth or dirt that was tough, that was hard, and he wants to loosen it up; that would be tochen (grinding), or maybe dirt is muktzeh. A person, he doesn't expect normally to use dirt on Yom Tov, so that's a problem. So therefore, Chachamim (Sages) discuss how we deal with this mitzvah (commandment) on Yom Tov: ha-shochet (one who slaughters) chaya va'of (bird) b'Yom Tov (One who slaughters a non-domestic animal and a bird on a festival day). If somebody wants to slaughter a non-domestic animal, or a bird on Yom Tov, say Beit Shammai, he's allowed to slaughter the animal and then dig up dirt with the shovel that's already in the ground and use it to cover up the blood. What he's talking about is a situation where he's dealing with afar tichuach, where the dirt is already loose, and there is a shovel stuck into the ground already before Yom Tov. You take away all of the issues when this is happening. The fact that you're dealing with dirt that's very loose means you're not creating a hole. That you're digging up an actual hole on Yom Tov, you're not choresh. So therefore, that takes care of one problem. And the fact that the shovel's already in the ground also means you're not even plowing on a deRabbanan (rabbinic) level. Number two, the fact that the earth is loose also takes away the problem of tochen because you don't need to grind up that hard clump of dirt when you have the dirt ready to put on the blood. And then lastly, the fact that the shovel was in the ground makes the dirt non-muktzeh because the fact that you put the shovel in means you're sort of designating or preparing it before Yom Tov.
And Beit Hillel argue and say that you're not allowed to slaughter the animal unless you have dirt that's fully prepared before Yom Tov. It's not enough to have afar tichuach, loose dirt with the shovel inserted in it. It's possible that even though you have loose dirt and you have the shovel there, certain pieces of dirt will come up, and you may need to grind them when they come up. So Chachamim said you're not allowed to do even that according to Beit Hillel. What a person has to have is dirt completely dug up, broken down, and prepared before Yom Tov. Beit Hillel do say that if you already broke the law and slaughtered the animal on Yom Tov, you didn't have any dirt prepared. You did wrong. What you're allowed to do at that point, after you have the blood in front of you that you have to cover, is dig up dirt with the shovel and use it to cover the blood. He's talking again here about afar tichuach, with soft earth, where we're not nervous that you're going to grind up the dirt, usually, and also with the shovel already being in the ground before Yom Tov. That's the way you could do it after the fact, according to Beit Hillel.
Now we'll talk about a case where Beit Hillel agree that a person is allowed to slaughter a chaya, a non-domesticated animal, or an of, a bird, in the first place, even if they have no earth before Yom Tov. Ashes, like dirt and like sand, are also allowed to be used to cover up the blood. If you have ashes that were left in an oven or a stove before Yom Tov, a person is allowed to slaughter a non-domesticated animal or a bird on Yom Tov and use the ashes to cover up the blood. And if you have no earth before Yom Tov, you're allowed to slaughter a non-domesticated animal or a bird on Yom Tov and use the ashes that are there to cover up the blood, because the ashes that are there are considered to be mukhan, they're considered to be prepared. The owner of the ashes had in mind, probably before Yom Tov, to use the ashes for all of his needs on Yom Tov. Different things come up, and therefore he was going to use these ashes for something. So they're not considered to be muktzeh; they could be used for the mitzvah of kisui hadam, even though a person didn't specifically have them in mind. Since they were in his general purview of use, he is allowed to use them for kisui hadam.