{"id":12387,"date":"2026-07-18T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T21:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/?p=12387"},"modified":"2026-08-09T10:34:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T07:34:37","slug":"17-18-06","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/17-18-06\/","title":{"rendered":"06. The Knife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"direction: ltr\"><em>She\u1e25ita<\/em> must be performed with an instrument that cuts cleanly. In principle, one may slaughter even with a detached object such as flint, glass, or wood, provided that it is sharp, smooth, and free of any nick (<em>\u1e24ullin<\/em> 15b; SA YD 6:1\u20132). In practice, however, <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em> is performed with a metal knife, because metal is strong and can be sharpened to a fine, reliable edge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">Any nick in the knife invalidates the <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em>, because at the point of the nick, the knife tears the <em>simanim<\/em> rather than cutting them. A nick is disqualifying only if it \u201ccatches\u201d: if a hair drawn along the blade would get caught in the damaged spot, it is a nick that catches (<em>\u1e24ullin<\/em> 17b; SA YD 18:2). For this reason, the knife must be examined carefully before <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em>, on all three sides of its edge. The examination is performed by gently running one\u2019s fingernail back and forth along the full length of the right side of the edge, then along the left side, and finally along the cutting edge itself. If a nick is found, the knife is sharpened again until the edge is completely smooth. Originally, the three sides of the knife were also checked against the flesh of the finger. In recent generations, however, as metalworking improved and knives became sharper, this became difficult to do without risking a cut to the finger. <em>Sho\u1e25atim<\/em> and inspectors therefore customarily rely on the fingernail examination alone (<em>\u1e24ullin<\/em> 17b; SA YD 18:9; <em>Beit David<\/em> 5).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">The knife must be examined again after <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em>. If a nick is then found, the animal is forbidden, because the blade may have been damaged by the animal\u2019s hide before it reached the <em>simanim<\/em>, so that the actual <em>she\u1e25ita<\/em> was performed with a defective knife. To reduce this risk, mud and clay are removed from the animal\u2019s neck before slaughter, and thick wool is shaved away (SA YD 18:12).<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr\">When many animals are slaughtered, the knife must be checked between one animal and the next; otherwise, if a nick is discovered only at the end, every animal slaughtered since the last valid inspection becomes forbidden. Large-scale poultry slaughter follows a different practice. There, after the initial inspection, many birds are slaughtered in succession, and the knife is examined afterward. If a nick is found, all the birds slaughtered since the previous inspection are rendered forbidden. This system is used because the loss caused by stopping to inspect the knife before every bird would be greater than the occasional loss incurred when a damaged knife is discovered and an entire group of birds must be rejected (SA and Rema YD 18:11; see <em>Beit David<\/em>, <em>Yesodei Ha-Bayit<\/em> 18:6:3). In practice, improved metal production has made this concern far less common: today\u2019s knives are made from high-quality metal, and nicks serious enough to invalidate them are found only rarely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She\u1e25ita must be performed with an instrument that cuts cleanly. In principle, one may slaughter even with a detached object such as flint, glass, or wood, provided that it is sharp, smooth, and free of any nick (\u1e24ullin 15b; SA YD 6:1\u20132). In practice, however, she\u1e25ita is performed with a metal knife, because metal is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-17-18"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>06. The Knife - Peninei Halakha<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ph.yhb.org.il\/en\/17-18-06\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"06. 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