Bechoros 24

Okay, the Mishnah discusses a sapphic, a case where you're not sure if it's a B'chor or not.

Let's say you purchase from a Goy, and then you see that it's nursing.

Does the fact that it's nursing mean that it's a child and therefore it's already given birth before? Or maybe it just likes to nurse other people's kids.

Let's say you purchase an animal from a goy, and it is feeding, it's nursing a child that you bought it with, right? You don't know if it's its own child or it's another child.

So Rishon HaMir says, we're not concerned that it is a child of another animal.

We can be 100% certain, halachically, that it is the child of this mother.

And therefore, any future births are definitely not the B'chor who can keep them.

Let's say you go into your herd of your flock.

Okay, and you see two groups of animals.

One group are the ones that have given birth before.

One group have never given birth before.

וראה את המפקירות מניקות ושאינן מפקירות מניקות.

And you see in group one, the ones that are given birth before, sorry, this is their first time giving birth, i.e. they have their first ones with them producing milk to the kids with them.

And also, you see the other group that have given birth previously also producing milk and nursing the offspring with them.

Now, you don't know what happened.

Let's say you... you weren't at the farm for a few weeks.

So then you keep them in two different groups.

Uh, the the mothers that have given birth before and those that have not given birth before.

And now you see them with their kids, okay? But you don't know what happened in...

You don't know when these kids were born and who they were born to.

So the question is, can you assume that the kids that are being nursed in Group A belong to Group A, and the kids that are being nursed by Group B belong to Group B? So...

we are not concerned that they are nursing somebody else's kid.

We assume that the offspring stays by its own mother, and therefore the offspring by those that have given birth previously are indeed their kids, and they are definitely not Bukhars, and the offspring of those that have never given birth before are indeed definite Bukhars.

And we'll see.

This is Rabban Shemim ben Gamaliel.